Artist's Statement

Nostalgia was first described as a disease in the 19^th century and referred to the pain felt by someone who, longing to return home, fears never to see it again.   In contemporary contexts, it is a word that conjures paradoxical and layered associations.  Often considered a pejorative term, it references a retrograde attitude that idealizes the past and stands counter to progression.  Yet as a reaction against a modernist agenda of “progress,” nostalgia intimates a suspicion of an ever-improving future.  Skeptical, reflective and voyeuristic, it illuminates the space of longing.  It is this more complicated nostalgia that I explore in my current work.  An intentional manipulation of images toward strangeness embodies both desire and ambivalence of familial, and especially maternal, space.  The transformation brought on through process both creates a sense of past while it denies the betrayal of time, suggesting another proposition that contains facets of truth, fantasy, desire, pride and regret.