I am an artist.  I am a fine art printmaker.  I am an environmentalist.  I am a scientist. I am an immigrant. I am a feminist.  I am a teacher.  I am a mother.  I am a grandmother.  All my “I ams” are layered and expressed in the work I produce.

 

As a Marine Biologist I am interested in the connection between society and the oceans. Although we live a terrestrial life, our relationship with the sea is vital to both culture and our existence. Growing up along the beaches of Long Island, NY my lifelong love of the ocean informs my work. I use fine art printmaking techniques as part of the narrative in my exploration of themes of balance and sustainability. In my work I explore how a patriarchal-led exploitation of marine resources is contributing to an unsustainable relationship with the world ocean.  A proactive approach which employs scientific and technological applications to sympathetically tackle the challenges to the health of the world ocean is the basis of my work.

 

My images often start as photographic studies of natural marine forms, marine environments, anywhere there exists an interface:  the local fish market, fishing harbours, the research laboratory and of course the shoreline and beaches.  I use the photographs either directly, in photoetches or screen prints, or as references for drawings that become etches, screen prints, monoprints, collagraphs or cyanotypes.  I enjoy the conversion from the photographic image to an image I produce through drawing/painting with toner wash, a solution that reticulates when painted on a textured translucent material, and then putting these images through printmaking processes.  I become a conduit, physically altering the photographic image through my experience, muscle action, eye-to-hand coordination, and the physics and chemistry involved in printmaking. 

 

Currently I am working on an installation project which combines my memories of childhood games with an ancient creature, the horseshoe crab that spawns on the beaches along the eastern seaboard of the US.  Indefensible to humans, this prehistoric animal’s blue copper-based blood is harvested as an essential component of all pharmaceutical company’s quality control for anything medical put into the human body.  The population of horseshoe crabs is in a 500-million-year-old balance with the population of the migratory Red Knot whose numbers are in steep decline.  I create large scale cyanotypes of horseshoe crabs and red knots in which the blue of the cyanotypes becomes a player in the narrative.  The molecule of the chemical factor within the blood and images of the horseshoe crab larvae makes up a screenprinted wallpaper that cascades in a 60’s retro pattern as a nod to the cascading reaction sought by Big Pharma.  Additionally, I etch copper plates with my own banknote featuring horseshoe crabs representing the monetization of their lifeblood. 

 

A previous project dealt with coral bleaching where I started with photographs of coral core flagstones.  Increasing acidity of ocean water and rising global temperatures contribute to bleaching corals: these conditions stress corals causing them to lose their vibrant colours when they eject the colourful symbiotic algae.  Using photoetching where the metal plates are exposed to a salt “acid” to bite the image into the plate mirrors the bleaching process being described.  The large scale etches are inked in monochromatic blue-black to represent the loss of biodiversity and starkness of the dead reefs.  I produce work in sets or factors of twelve to reflect the number of years that the UN predicted that a tipping point of no return would be reached if humanity does not take steps to mitigate the damage.

 

I take inspiration from several artists, many of whom use a marine aesthetic such as Ellen Gallagher.  I admire Xavier Cortada for his environmental activism and his use of melted glacial ice to produce images.