Several written works have expanded how I perceive the world of art: Lucy Lippard’s From the Center, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, Robert Smithson’s Essays on Entropy and The New Monuments, and Rosalind Krauss’ Grids. I delight in stumbling upon the art of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama, Ana Mendieta, and Eva Hesse. These female artists all demonstrate a vision, beauty, and uncompromised spirit. Ultimately, I also feel a closeness and yearning to adopt Francis Alys’ art practice: maximum effort and minimal impact and focusing on the process, as much as the outcome, as the work of art.
I collaborate on a lot of projects with my husband, James Gallagher. Many of our projects focus on collective energy from natural catastrophes compounded with man-made disasters - especially at specific turmoil points. In 1991, the beachfront memorial I created was a eulogy for a voiceless population during the 1991 cyclone that devastated Bangladesh. My work took the form of children’s bodies on a beach in Taiwan. I collected children's clothing, sewed them, and filled them with sand. The beachcombers would jump over these sandbags, and their playfulness gave them much-needed merit. Auguste Rodin once compared a sculpture to the fullness of a fruit. Rodin would not have missed the analogy: so many bloated bodies floating in the water after the cyclone. Subsequently, I continued with outdoor projects that traveled through rivers, over land, and into the forest: 1994, Drop It in the River in Taipei, Taiwan; 2011 Vitruvian Man and Boat Sakura in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with artist James Gallagher; 2012 Shipping Container Art in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and 2015 Greenbelt Meridian in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2016, I retired from teaching to focus on art making.
Just as a rock is not lost until you find it, art is only art once it is perceived. An essential balance exists between humans and nature, as well as life and death. If our art can create this new narrative I hold close to my heart, then there is value.
I collaborate on a lot of projects with my husband, James Gallagher. Many of our projects focus on collective energy from natural catastrophes compounded with man-made disasters - especially at specific turmoil points. In 1991, the beachfront memorial I created was a eulogy for a voiceless population during the 1991 cyclone that devastated Bangladesh. My work took the form of children’s bodies on a beach in Taiwan. I collected children's clothing, sewed them, and filled them with sand. The beachcombers would jump over these sandbags, and their playfulness gave them much-needed merit. Auguste Rodin once compared a sculpture to the fullness of a fruit. Rodin would not have missed the analogy: so many bloated bodies floating in the water after the cyclone. Subsequently, I continued with outdoor projects that traveled through rivers, over land, and into the forest: 1994, Drop It in the River in Taipei, Taiwan; 2011 Vitruvian Man and Boat Sakura in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with artist James Gallagher; 2012 Shipping Container Art in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and 2015 Greenbelt Meridian in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2016, I retired from teaching to focus on art making.
Just as a rock is not lost until you find it, art is only art once it is perceived. An essential balance exists between humans and nature, as well as life and death. If our art can create this new narrative I hold close to my heart, then there is value.