These pieces are modern day "samplers" where stitches do the work of pencil marks and brushstrokes.
This series is a nod to the artist's design background and love for pattern while capitalizing on readily available technology tools. Coined by mathematician Benoit Mandlebrot in 1975, fractals represent a mathematical formula which expresses among other things, self-similarity, recursive function and irregular regularity.
Manipulating images derived from the Mandlebrot and Julia set formulas, a wide range of images can be generated from the highly abstract, to familiar forms found in nature: snowflakes, plants, crystals, mountain ranges, ocean waves and lightening, etc.
Representations of these mathematical formulas are selected and manipulated on the computer, transferred onto cotton and stitched. The result is intended to be a visually rich reminder of how we default to conformity yet yearn to diverge.
During a summer cruise around Lake Superior, the artist was fascinated by the strong horizontal layers of limestone seeping, weeping and otherwise dripping with brightly colored deposits from the mineral rich cliffs of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The collection of landscape photography taken by the family was culled through to arrive at a series of images that celebrate the linear quality and amazing color of Michigan's "Pictured Rocks". The collection was auctioned off at Chicago's Center on Halsted in support of their LGBTQ homeless youth program.
Diversions and experiments!
Letting Go
Currently finding the elegance and wonder in much-maligned, often hidden, spore-producing organisms. Fungus… it’s growing on me.
