Dream Wife are a four-piece Punk-Powerpop band hailing from London, UK with Icelandic ties through Singer Rakel Mjöll. Formed in 2014 by Rakel, guitarist Alice Go and Bassist Bella Podpadec as an art college mock-girl-band-project it then developed into a real live act with drum machine, later being joined by drummer Alex Paveley in 2018. They rapidly gained a large following within the UK and have released two studio albums along with a number of hit singles. They have toured extensively for many years across Europe and USA and are renowned for their explosive live energy on the stage.
They came to Fish Factory in October 2020 to work on songs for their next album. At that point they hadn’t played together in nearly a year, due to the pandemic and Rakel being in Iceland. This was the perfect opportunity to get together in a peaceful place with access to the concert hall for rehearsals and songwriting. After three weeks of that they then booked two days in Studio Silo, Fish Factory’s Recording Studio, with the intention of recording first versions of the songs that they had put together during their stay. While there they also did a Silo Tape Session with Vinny Wood our House Engineer, along with Blair Alexander on the camera. This is featured in the interview video, with songs from their current album “So When You Gonna…”. It is also available in full on the Studio Silo youtube channel.
It was very nice to have Dream Wife here with us and we look forward to hearing their next album when it gets released into the world!
Laura Thipphawong is a Canadian artist, writer, and historian, and has exhibited art and presented her research throughout several galleries and international academic forums. Her studio practice is representative of her research on the complex symbolism of the psyche in response to various social factors, with focus on sexuality, horror, folklore, and natural science.
Laura used her time at the Fish Factory to source inspiration from the regional environment and to reinvigorate her work habit of undergoing day-long uninterrupted drawing and painting sessions. While in the studio, Laura organized and drafted hundreds of source images for use in her series of paintings involving the natural world as an allegory for emotional human experience, and of the connectedness between time, space, and the psyche. She created several studies from which to evolve into oil paintings back at her Toronto studio, and as well created a small series of illustrations informed by the whimsical and turbulent Icelandic culture and landscape.
During her time in Iceland Laura met many wonderful people, fulfilled a life-long dream (hiking a volcano), and experienced some deeply charged moments of personal connection both inside the studio and in the outside world.
Blaze Christopher is a multidisciplinary artist and poet based in London, UK. Her work revolves around challenging the confines of empathy and how play can be utilised to understand one another more. She believes radical empathy can change the way the art world communicates with itself and the world outside of it.
During her stay at the fish factory Blaze worked on creating an hour-long audio segment of poetry that was aired on Montez Press Radio called ‘Cartoonish Feelings’. Her poetry discussed vulnerability, religiosity, death, love, and philosophy through the lens of personal experience. Alongside working on writing, Blaze explored dying fabric with natural elements and making soft sculpture and wearable pieces from the fabric with the integration of ceramic elements. Between working through all these mediums, Blaze’s stay culminated in a playful body of work that neatly binds, painting, sculpture, and ceramics into one fluid body. She will continue to develop this body of work back in London.
Tetsuya Hori is a composer for contemporary music. During his stay in Stöðvarfjörður he has composed an orchestral piece for a symphonic orchestra.
On his work: “I always think the composition is actually not the task of creating sounds, but the task of listening to sounds from everywhere. And these sounds are in the vast landscape of Iceland, this fish factory, or every little event in my daily life for example. By the way, it is not necessary to listen to the sounds from the ears, but the information obtained from the eyes is also converted into sounds and listenable. Then I interpret them through the filters inside me and write down the notes on the paper in the end. Composition is like drawing a picture on canvas. At first, I need to decide the size of the canvas, then paint the base color on the whole, then draw by the bird’s-eye view and by watching details. So, I repeat these steps toward the final double bar, the end of the music. I am very thankful to really nice people and environments of the fish factory!”
Rebecca Deegan is a figurative artist from Ireland, creating dark, surreal, and atmospheric oil paintings. Before starting her residency, Rebecca researched into Icelandic folklore, and was drawn to the story of Útburður, which inspired the project she worked on at the Fish Factory. Long ago when a woman gave birth to an unwanted baby, she would wrap the child in a cloth and leave it on a lava field. The child would freeze overnight, and come back in the form of Útburður – a type of ghost with the skull of the baby, and the body of a bird, with plumage the same colour as the cloth it was wrapped in.
In her paintings, Rebecca explored the archetypal symbols of this story, as well as natural elements from the beautiful and vast landscape of Stöðvarfjörður. She also experimented with ceramics – she sculpted a ceramic baby skull, and was lucky to find a pair of bird wings in a field, which she used to create a mixed media Útburður sculpture. During her time at the Fish Factory, Rebecca slowed her pace right down, and took time to explore the landscape, go Aurora hunting, and create detailed paintings in which she aspired to capture the mystical beauty of the land, and the underlying darkness of the folktales.
Jo is a visual artist based in Suffolk, UK, she primarily works within the public realm on large scale commissions for external and internal sites. Jo has undertaken various major projects in the UK, as well as in France, India and Ireland. Alongside her public work she also makes experimental drawings and materials-based works which continue to inform and inspire her commissions. She has lectured on foundation and degree level courses and is an arts educator facilitating workshops for galleries and community art projects.
Jo came to the Fish Factory to spend time in nature and to be passive, to be completely open to what may come out, looking for the right images in the surroundings and not restricting that process with words. Taking time out from her professional practise and the demands of working on large scale commissions she responded to the environment, allowing things to flow, mistakes to happen and shifts to occur. The quiet, cold and dark of this special place enhancing this period of focus.
Walking daily in the hills she made drawings as a way to absorb the landscape focusing on the details of rocks, ice and lichen. These images fed into further work back in the studio where she made some small ceramic sculptures as well as larger drawings and collages. Jo will develop the work from her time at the fish factory into a new series of small sculptures back in her UK studio.
David Unland is an audiovisual tinkerer, who came to Stöðvarfjörður from Bremen, Germany, to stay for the month of October 2021. He used his time in the creative center to write the code for a computer program that transforms the contours of mountain ridges into sound. The work focuses on rigid mountain and rock features, and how perspective strongly defines their shape.
Artist Statement:
”What appears to be sturdy, immobile constructs of nature becomes vivid and fluent, once you start changing your perspective. Moving only a dozen of meters, the compositions of all the lines describing the mountains’ characters will shift ‒ the outline of the ridges in front of the clear skies, the tilted lava layers inclined towards the north-west, the trails that falling gravel leaves behind or the gashes that are carved into the slopes by the rivers ‒ they all are moving, as you change your perspective.”
Observations were made during hikes in the mountains around the fjord, taking a series of photos of the same mountain peaks from slightly different perspectives. This way, a visually appealing collection of mountain-sound-files was created that can be found on the project’s website: http://david.unland.eu/mountainScanner/
”As a side project, I worked on a remake of a musical piece I wrote & recorded earlier, in 2013-14, in Iceland. I tried to use all the instruments and facilities I could find in the Fish Factory, including a lovely/shabby acoustic guitar with five bronze and one nylon string, a bass guitar, a drumset, percussion, piano, an old harmonium, an organ beat machine, and vocals. The song was recorded solely with a Zoom H4N field recorder.”
Based in the UK, Joe Hemming is an artist working in a variety of media including printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture.
“I came to the residency with an open plan and to let my experiences and surroundings influence my work. I spent time walking in the hills and became interested in the idea of deep time geology and felt inspired by the large stones and rock piles in the area. I became interested in how these inanimate objects almost take on a living presence and bare witness to chance encounters in the ancient landscape.
I spent time in the studio drawing with pastels, allowing myself to loosen up and create abstract landscapes and drawings of sculptural forms inhabiting the landscape. I also used the wood workshop to create wooden sculptures, taking an experimental approach to turning wood on the lathe.
I had such an enjoyable time at the Fish Factory and that was down to shared experiences with lovely people and the warmth and creative freedom of the place.”
Gerda van de Glind is a writer based in The Netherlands. She works for different art magazines, websites and art spaces. At the Fish Factory, she has been working on a project of her own.
“Since my graduation from art school I have been working in the field of contemporary art and I’ve been collecting these surreal stories along the way. Stories about artists, scientists, writers, pioneers and other imaginative people. Stories about future libraries, cosmic arcs, singing glaciers and an enormous wheatfield in the middle of New York. These stories almost sound like fiction, but have actually been brought to life by real people because they sensed it was possible. To me they all echo the same creative spirit through space and time. I came to Stöðvarfjörður to weave all these stories together in a new tale that shines a humble light on the importance of imagination in our society.”
“The Fish Factory was the perfect place to work on this project, and to try out some ceramics and other studio’s when I got stuck in my head too much during writing. I also really enjoyed being outside a lot, as the surrounding landscape echoes something of the same power I can experience when hearing these surreal stories or seeing mesmerizing artwork. I’ve had an absolutely wonderful time that I will never forget, and I look forward to build further on the project at home, and hopefully returning here one day with a finished story to tell. Una, Vincent & Monika: thank you so much for everything!”
Mary Kate Noonan is a Multidisciplinary Artist based in the United States. Her work is traditionally focused on surreal “dreamscapes” often using collage, painting, and ceramics as her chosen mediums. While at Fish Factory, Mary slowed down her rapid process of making to spend time around Stöðvarfjörður and reconnect with her passions for exploration and music. Many nights she would lay up on the hill behind her residence and talk with stars and spend every afternoon dancing on the dock; allowing her body to move as it may, ever in search of the freedom that comes with letting go.
Susan Wood is a Scottish artist, now living in Gateshead in the north-east of England. Her first Residency at the Fish Factory was in March 2017. Having decided to do four Residencies, in order to experience the different seasons in the east Fjords, this is her fourth and final month in the series.
Inspired by nature, beachcombing, and found objects, she creates unconventional weavings, and assemblages. The aim is to hold a Cabinet of Curiosities exhibition in Gateshead, including weaving, linocuts, woodcuts, knitting, and further developments of her experiments with low-firing glass paints applied to float glass and mirror glass. The interdisciplinary approach will highlight the many different sources of inspiration, from kelp and mountain silhouettes to a dead whale founded beached at the end of the fjord.
Martina Mäsiarová (1991) is a visual artist and art educator based in Žilina, Slovakia. She is interested in implying Montessori elements to her practice. In 2018 she graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (Slovakia) in the Department of Painting and Other Media in the studio led by professor Daniel Fischer, later Martin Špirec and Rastislav Podhorský.
In her practice she mainly creates inter-and trans-media projects based on observation (both the outer and the inner world) through drawing as a usual starting point, which often leads to the extension to spatial installations, site-specific interventions, and eventually creating complex environments that are opened toward all the art media, emphasizing on their interconnection, harmonization, supporting and underlining each other. The core of her interest is a relationship: the process of creating a relationship, communication, dialogue, the feeling of closeness – whether as an ideological and conceptual theme within her artworks or as a form of creation and realization of the artwork or in collaborative projects in relation of her toward the other, the space or the world.
Artist statement:
”In the last couple of years my work gained certain elements of performativity, body-ness, temporality, it has deflected from visuality and imagery towards immaterial – gesture, word, movement, atmosphere. Let´s call it “situations”. By creating a situation, I explore ways of evoking a bodily experience using im-material means (sound, light, drawing with just a minimal trace, gesture, fleeting movement in the space…the body subtly touches another body, lungs exhale, the moon overlays the sun. stealthy). I try to evoke a suggestive feeling, to create some sort of timelessness, to make one feel present, to experience the moment, the being, being present. This comes together with questioning the impact of memory: how does memory influence our perception of space? I analyze the space limits and limitations, as well as limits of one´s body – what does the „outside“ mean? Where does the „inside“ begin? What is bigger: the outside or the inside? What „in-between” is?
During my residency in Fish Factory, I wanted to continue in my long-term research of the topics essential for my work – a mountain, sound, body and memory. These mutually overlap and interfere, together with my fascination with the sea and wind and sky. I was specifically fascinated by a phenomenon of the indistinctness of the horizon: the state of quietness, emptiness, stillness, indefiniteness; the time when the day turns into night and the light and dark have the same intensity, listening to the stones, their stories and histories, following the horizon, tracing the fog… Is there a way to reach the horizon? Is there a way to draw it? Is there a way to draw it, except the line? When I reach its point – would I find the edge of the world?
Most of the time during my stay I spent observing and perceiving the landscape. Only through a bodily experience and movement in the mountains and sea could I explore it as a whole. The result of my walks and runs and hikes and wandering and getting lost and found is a series of drawings and ink paintings, notes and videos. Now, more is to come…”
Taylor Raye Erickson is a painter and art educator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was her second visit with us this year, that she wanted to re-explore the landscape in Stöðvarfjörður, hereon the east side of Iceland. During her residency time, Taylor made a collection of paintings mainly using acrylic paint on Yupo-paper. She has also created some short videos, where the multi-layerdness reflects the essence of dreams presented in her paintings.
Artist Statement:
”My body of work from my time at the Fish Factory is comprised of paintings, video work, drawings, and photographs. Regardless of the medium, the subject matter is primarily vivid, layered, and dreamy landscapes. These ethereal spaces closely represent the terrain of the mind: hazy, shadowy, and complex. Although ethereal, these images are often created by rearranging color, texture, and light from my immediate surroundings. The imagery of the wild Icelandic nature becomes a language for the world within. A collection of moments merge into representations of surreal, chaotic rhythms throughout the landscapes of the mind and the earth. I’m so grateful for the time I had at the Fish Factory surrounded by great people and inspiring landscapes.”
Ethan is a designer and illustrator from Brooklyn, New York. His original plan for his time at the residency was a series of outdoor paintings around the idea of “what do we think of as nature?”.
Work-demands and pandemic-timing-changes trashed the idea of pursing this project in a monastic-single-focus way. Instead, his 3-month residency was a mix of painting, ceramics, woodworking and a series of illustrations for the Climate Land Ambition Rights Alliance (CLARA) all fueled by exploring the East Fjords on foot and bike.
Artist statement:
“I lucked out in being at the Fish Factory, and in Stöðvarfjörður, and in the artists I shared the residency with. The place that Una, Vinny and the interns like Vid and Monika have made is a powerfully energizing place. I love that the mission of the Center is not only to support the arts but also ‘to regenerate and sustain our small village by making it into a possible and desirable place to settle’.
At times I struggled with the frustration of not being able to drop everything from back home to immerse myself in the work. But I also became very enthusiastic about being able to do my ‘work-work’ along with ‘art-work’ in this remote and beautiful place. Now back home, I see this mixed bag of projects, rather than being scattered and diluted, as rich, interrelated material to expand upon. And I am excited by the chance of returning for an extended stay, made possible by the resources to do many kinds of work”.
Takk Fyrir, Ethan!
You can see more of his work on his website or Instagram:
Simona Ledl aka Mona L is a visual artist, working and living in Salzburg (Austria). In her works, she deals above all with the topics of connectedness and multi-layeredness, as well as the complexity associated with them. Being in touch with nature and getting inspired by the energy coming from it plays an important part in her working process.
Artist statement:
”I see art as a way of getting to know myself, others, and the world. I am particularly interested in the question of how certain environments and social situations are perceived from different perspectives:
Our existence is determined by various events. From birth to death, we live through moments of joy, sadness, becoming, and passing away. Every person relies on a value system that offers protection and promises order. This order influences the way we perceive the world in all its details.
During my stay in Stöðvarfjörður I engaged with the concept of common ground. Drawing on the sensation of the individual, I establish a connection between people’s interpretations of photographs I made here in Iceland, thus creating an image of collective perception. Based on interviews I created digital artworks that combine people’s individual perspectives. Those digital works have likewise served me as a basis for further experiments with multicolour linocut printing. It has been a wonderful and exciting journey full of extraordinary treats for my spirit of discovery and adventure.”
Mikkel is an animator and illustrator from the Czech Republic, staying in the Artist Residency for the second time. He came here to take a break from making animation and started to focus on non-digital art. His artistic expression is inspired by arctic nature. First, he was focused on practicing the painting of Icelandic landscapes with animals, which later resulted into a bigger personal project – the picture book. Here was Mikkel trying to get through his emotional condition, doing everyday rituals in the mountains and catching his thoughts in the landscape. The whole story is told by a raven called Krummi, who has arrived in a fjord by boat and tried to get out of his lost mind. The book will be hopefully published one day.
“I was going through different stages of my feelings the last few months. I was working with my emotions surrounded by the local landscape. The light summer nights, austfjarðarþokan fog which could stay in the fjord for a few days, hot sunshine and cold refreshing mountain stream. The wind was so strong you could barely walk, clouds touching the mountains peaks or hiding them, all kinds of rain, morning sunlight reflecting in drops on long grass, and more and more in this magical fjord. I could identify my emotional state with the changing landscape and its weather.
The book about Krummi reflects my feelings in certain times and certain places. And I am also very glad, I was surrounded by wonderful people, I met so many nice souls here and made new friendships. And I know I will come back here again someday. Thank you for having me, dear Fish Factory team!”
Noah Hartley is a conservation artist and art educator based in the United States (North Carolina). His plan was to illustrate Iceland’s wildlife and in doing so study the history and relationship with them and the island they inhabit.
Artist Statement:
”After seeing multiple artists that were staying there do printmaking, I decided it would be a good idea to grow my printmaking skills and learn how to teach it for my classes back home. I was able to create 5 linocut prints with lots of prints from each one and truly learned so much from so many different artists (including Una)!
My stay at the Fish Factory undoubtedly changed me as a person and an artist, and equipped me with the necessary skills to teach printmaking in the states!”
Claire Thill is a Luxembourg-based writer, performer, and theatremaker interested in exploring multidisciplinary territories of performance and storytelling. Her pieces start from concepts and broader themes rather than from a structured idea of the plot. She intertwines different elements such as text and the body in movement with image and audio in order to create performance structures that are at once multilayered and fragmented.
She used her residency at the Fish Factory to delve deep into the preparation of her latest theatre project, an adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s ‘Der Besuch der alten Dame’. The piece uses the original script in order to investigate the feminist and women narratives hidden behind the lines. During her stay, she wrote and re-wrote fragments and extensively researched themes such as trauma, collective guilt, and rituals of forgiveness.
Florian Gantner, based in Vienna (Austria), is a writer and Art director of a literary festival.
During his stay at the Fish Factory, he worked on his next novel „Agile Arno“, which reflects on the future of work, service society and dignity. When not writing on his novel, he tries to create poems of undeniable truth, in the tradition of the Discoparty-Brothers (Licht ist gut für Augen / Seife aber nicht; Light is good for eye / but soap is not).
Alicja Natalia Wacowska (Balance with Alice) is a yoga teacher with certification as RYT200 – Multi-style Yoga Teacher Training Course, Yin Yoga Teacher and Yoga Nidra. She mainly works with her own method which is based on intuitive yoga flow and consciousness movement. She is also a mentor for creative development, with a few years of professional experience working on various cultural projects.
During her six weeks in the artist residency at Fish Factory, she did some yoga sessions for the artists and arranged a workshop called ”Look into your creative power”. She also continued to develop the ~Yoga & Creativity project, which focuses on exploring how yoga and other practices influence the process of creative work. She uses the word “~ yoga” in the means around yoga and other forms of conscious movement, mindfulness, or embodiment practices. The project includes interviews with creatives, workshops, yoga classes, private coaching/mentoring sessions and more of will be enriched by new forms emerging from the research. During her stay, she did interviews with 3 artists which are available to listen here: https://m.soundcloud.com/yogaandcreativity
Artist statement:
” For two weeks I’ve arranged Balance Studio where artists could come any time during the day to relax, recharge and take some time to connect with their creativity. I prepared the room to fulfill the various needs depending on what feels good at that time, for example, it was possible to practice yoga, dance, stay in silence, write, meditate, drink tea, use some cards or create.
My motivation is to connect yoga and conscious development practices. I have a few years of work experience in different cultural and creative projects where I worked with artists, designers, creatives. My intention is to explore how these two worlds influence each other and what are the possibilities for balancing the creative work process. I would like to open possibilities for creatives to grow, bloom, and flow their potential through the channels of conscious and grounding practices.”
Anna Lehespalu is an Estonian photographer from Tallinn. She uses photography, video, and music as a medium of expression. Her process of making art is very intuitive and connected with psychology, which helps her to research and understand the human mind. She expresses her feelings by documenting her closest surroundings and environment, which is often the landscape.
Artist statement:
” I had a big dream to visit Iceland for a very long time and for a while it did not happen. However, the wanting to go and knowing Iceland will somehow transition me got stronger and stronger. So much that I even visited Iceland in my dreams while sleeping. Then In 2020 it finally happened. I went to the South of Iceland first and started a project that I did not know what it’s going to be about. I knew that it will get more clear to me intuitively in the process. That year turned out to be an intense year for everyone. I was able to stay in Iceland for about 7 months.
The project I started has a name. It’s called: Stay home, go out. It is inspired by nature being a resource of new found freedom.
During the residency in Fish Factory, I started working more deeply with my idea while giving space and time to explore the ideas and feelings that reflect back to me through nature. The goal was to get closer to the series of images and videos for a personal exhibition. While staying in the residency I discovered many suppressed emotions and fears inside of me and I decided to observe them more closely.
Usually, I work mostly alone but this time I got very lucky and was surrounded by many beautiful souls who I was able to share this time with and they helped me in my search more than they know. The fish factory is a very magical place and there is a lot of love there. What emerged from my residency is a lot of new material. I work a lot with film photography, I am excited to be able to work further with all the material that was born there in the east fjords. I started to work on a new idea there at Stöðvarfjörður, where I put myself as a subject in nature for a series of self-portraits. As a human, I am interested in what way I am a part of nature. How I am born from the ground and become the ground. I am looking for new ways to connect through listening to my instincts and testing my own limits within nature.”
If you want to see more of her work, check out her Instagram account: www.instagram.com/annalehespalu
Emma Banks is a poet born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, and who has since wandered all over. She’s currently in the process of completing her BFA in English from Kenyon College and the University of Oxford. While her work is written and therefore visually static, she adds dimensionality to it by weaving storytelling and imagery, crafting together a sort of tempered, ebbing narrative. She is currently in the process of finishing her debut poetry collection, titled A Body of Its Hungers.
Artist Statement
I (so very luckily) came to the factory nearly two years after my project was approved and as an almost entirely different person. This book too has held many forms, both in my relationship to it and the story it’s trying to convey. At first glance, this collection was a reflection of myself and the environments I’ve found myself in over the years. And in a way, it still is: it’s very much tied to the idea of place, to the idea of the self and body in a specific landscape, and the manner in which our memory influences and is influenced by spaces we occupy. But in other ways, it’s no longer just my story that I’m attempting to tell. It’s about my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, which is perched in a water-crossed part of the central Southern United States. It’s about the generations of women in my family, of the birds stalking through the reeds with each season’s tide, of being empty and full, of my leaving and returning.
During my residency, I was able to fold a divided prototype of the book, with almost two sections complete. I never anticipated writing nearly half of my book here, but the factory ended up being such a kismet space to redevelop A Body of Its Hungers. That’s not just because of its energy and history (and all the wonderful people within it). Situated right by the mouth of the fjörd and tucked between two mountain ranges, the factory building is both hidden by and revealed through the fog that trudges low towards the water. What a captivating, mysterious, and inherently of-the-landscape space to think about the places I have been, who is still there, and what of me exists because of them.
Gillian Pokalo is a visual artist living and working near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the USA. Her artwork integrates printmaking, photography, and painting, and it reflects on the ways that man-made architecture is eclipsed by nature.
During her residency at the Fish Factory, Gillian photo-documented abandoned farmhouses in the East Fjords, developed those images as silkscreens, and created a series of paintings that incorporated her photographic imagery along with cyanotypes of wildflowers that were blooming throughout July. The pieces she created while at the Fish Factory were authentic reflections of the time and place in which they were created.
Anne Klein is a printmaking and textile artist from Chicago in the US. She completed her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently an MA/MFA candidate in print media at the University of Iowa. She specializes in woven textiles, illustration, print media, and design for print.
During her time at the Fish Factory, Anne worked on a series of linocut prints drawing on the surreal landscape and idle sleepy scenes of small-town Stöðvarfjörður. Anne’s work typically responds to consumer culture specific to the American Midwest. This moment of reprieve in the eastern fjords was an exciting exploration into Iceland’s vernacular visual language. Anne’s work is underpinned by an open narrative loosely connecting each print as comic panels. She found that depicting these scenes in the stark black and white format of the linocut reflected the occasionally unsettling deep shadows and sleeplessness that came with the midnight sun in the Icelandic summer.
Artist statement:
In a turbulent moment marked by social isolation and all-consuming capitalism, I’m desperately clinging to comic relief. My work reacts to a consumer culture of kitsch icons and constructed narratives that have wormed their way into our collective consciousness. I create images of flattened dreamscapes depicting ritual, routine, and repressed memory through allegorical narratives of everydayness. I poke fun at the hellishly mundane pains of everyday life.
I work in printmaking to comment on the value and preciousness of a masterpiece in its singularity. The matrix becomes a symbol of feminine labor, the womb, and me, the imperfect machine of mass production in this mode of making. I am interested in the relationship between maker and consumer; often asking who the artwork is for and who has access to it.
