ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a costume designer, visual artist, collaborator, and mentor. In my work, I celebrate humans: performers, collaborators, and those who receive what I create. I examine societal and individual values, methods of self-expression, and the ways we use visual communication. Lately, this has led me to study wearable technology in performance settings.

 

I am drawn to this work because narratives connect us to one another, provide opportunities for emotional release, and serve as platforms for expression. Connections foster understanding, while affording space for both shared and opposing perspectives. Meaningful conversation is born in this space. To identify these connections, I engage in anthropological investigation, carefully considering historical power structures. 

 

I reframe contemporary issues through multiple lenses in order to generate a specific visual response and dress the character. Performers breathe life into the script and story, engaging their bodies’ expansive capacity to traverse the gamut between movement and stillness, silence and noise. I contribute to what they communicate through costume, steering first impressions, manipulating silhouette, and honoring ability. In this setting I am able to celebrate humans in their multiple variations, shapes, colors, and capacities. I fabricate costumes that camouflage, enhance, drape, sculpt, distort, mold, and embrace the wearer. I delight in color that enriches and conceals.

 

As a costume designer and artist, I use my understanding of the complexity of people, of history, of fabric, and of assumption to build compelling visual images that challenge, enlighten, and entertain. I am excited to be able to highlight, emphasize, edit, and underline a story so that what we see honors word and movement, eliciting thought provoking reactions from the audience.