I'm into using text for several reasons. Sometimes, I bring in text because the uniformity and clarity of language seems funny combined with the obscure style of my visual rendering. A lot of drawing for me is about the process of failing to accurately render. In words "a" is always "a," but pictorially what is dice and what is moon? The clarity of the language form is easier to cross- reference.

Text flattens and sits on the surface of paintings, making everything else appear behind it. I wonder if that is a pervasive relationship between language and experience. I know I am constantly being tripped up by trying to follow written instructions despite their imperfect accuracy. Just yesterday I was in a bathroom in a bar and there was a sign on the inside of the door that said, "Turn up for Lock. Turn down for Unlock. " The lock was just a button on the doorknob and could only be pushed in. I stared at it for a long time trying to reconcile the words with the visual.

In "As Moving Mental Blocks Beautiful Possible," I tried to frame the picture with words that both are and contradict a picture. Removing spaces between words or forcing words around corners shows the words divorced from meaning but as a visual element. Signatures are tricky. I ended up painting over those big signatures.

Curious about those fake band drawings... Not sure exactly why I am drawn to taking on a role like false interior designer. In my fetishizing of the role, an interior designer clarifies how we mediate private and public space by deciding what is right for a private space now. Decisions like, "Where should this vase go?" symbolize contemporary aesthetics scaled to comfort or convention, talking about class and taste but also about domestic life and love (as motives for materializing comfort). I painted the first interior designer piece in 2003; a small painting showing the lobby of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The levels of concentrated effort and decision that went into making that reactor (and it's famous malfunction) seemed interesting made into a metaphor about object placement, a picture of a lobby with bouquets and paintings. I wanted to look at uses of energy, on the chemical level of nuclear reaction to create electricity, a political level dealing with the debate on nuclear armament and nuclear power, the social level of energy of lives devoted to occupations and dividing personal and professional spaces, and my own energy as a younger person, thinking about assuming a role of "artist. " I wonder if much of that comes across in the painting.

My relationship to memory in my work is developing slowly. One reason I'm interested in memory is the psychological narrative of emotion draining from events as time passes. Like something profoundly emotional or traumatic becoming normalized in memory over time. What is left? Imagery and association, clues that add to a picture or story but with parts left out or new parts added. That sounds like a not very sexy description of surrealism. I do love Magritte.

I start with source imagery or phrases. When I'm working, I look at source images and try to record the experience of looking at source material, maybe as an exercise in trying to generate an emotional memory. Blank surfaces are very pleasing. I always try to work back to how nice the blank surface was, with mixed results. My palette is all over the place. I really need to get it under control. I use a lot of blue because the medieval illuminated manuscript artists did. My drawing style is intimate and poor. I've never been very good at drawing so my drawings are about following that into something that might be good, using the activity as a way of seeing. Looking for lines.

Yes, I am starting to paint with oils. The diagrammatic and illustrative qualities in my work are well suited to more flat painting mediums and drawings but there is something I'd like to get across that requires a heavier medium. Oil paint on canvas has a specific history and body that make it heavy-- enables a more aggressive intimacy. I'm starting a series of oil paintings about screen depth—the illusion of depth images convey on TV, movie, and computer screen.

Too many things! Artists who live in Portland like Storm Tharp, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Susan Ploetz, Chris Johanson, and Jo Jackson. My boyfriend's band, Dragging an Ox through Water, practicing next door. The way he combines song and noise gives me ideas about figuration and abstraction. I am working on several paintings illustrating a book my friend, Ashby Collinson wrote. It's sort of a color theory narrative in list form. She wrote it in response to some collages I made, so the collaborative process has been fun and interesting. Publication Studio, a non- demand publishing venture that also hosts events to support a growing conversation between books and their readers, prints the book. I'm participating in Ashby's business endeavor, Interested Party. I'm fabricating some paper dumb bells for her.

New Wave of Northwest Hardcore

I'm working on that series of oil paintings and I'm going to keep making works on paper. I want to work with names. I made a painting on paper with the name, "Calvin. " Maybe through names I can figure out signatures as arbitrators of authenticity. I like using names as a fan's invocation—distancing and drawing near.

Moving into a new studio and going to the Oregon coast for a day.

Alright this story doesn't beat a demon sighting but maybe is interesting? So, 2 years ago I was out singing karaoke with some friends. My friend Megan put in "when I see you smile," by Bad English. Before she went on stage to sing, she told me that whenever she karaokes this song disastrous things happen. Last time she sang it a guy had a heart attack in the bar and had to be rushed to the hospital. The time before a huge bar fight broke out in the middle of the song. So she sang the song -- very theatrical and great. Later, my boyfriend, Brian, and I went home and about an hour after we fell asleep we were shocked awake by a huge crash. We rushed out side and the entire street is illuminated by red and blue cop lights and there are like 7 cop cars and 20 cops surrounding this dude in the middle of the street. He's lying on his face in the middle of the road and they all have their guns pointed at him. One of them comes over to us and is like, get the hell out of here. We're like what's going on here? The cop tells us the man lying in the middle of the road led the cops on a drunken 40 block car chase until they finally bumped his car into a parked car in front of our house. The parked car they bumped the drunk into is Brian's car and it's completely totaled. No one was hurt and nothing was damaged except for his car. He got the city to reimburse him but it took like 6 months. When I told Megan about it she was completely nonplussed, like yeah, I told you fucked up shit always happens when I sing that Bad English song.

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