Project Proposal

After many thoughtful requests--here is the project that I have proposed to work on during the coming year:
With the Joan Mitchell Grant I will create a series of works based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” Since my work is a critique of the dualities inherent in Western thought and language, I am fascinated by Hawthorne’s ability to muddy the definitions of “good” and “evil” in this early American novel. The recent series of works, What Is Yours Is Mine Is Yours, examines the exchange of words, emotions, guilt and pleasure between mothers and daughters in a puritanical society as represented by Hester and Pearl. While Hester’s richly embroidered “A” is a decoration that accentuates and disguises her identity, her daughter Pearl is an “indistinguishable color” as she defies the parameters of shame placed on her by society. Due to the impact of this text on my work, I would like to take my research a step further. I would like to work in the landscape in which the novel is set--a New England woods. My project would involve using drawing materials and digital imaging to document the woods behind my grandmother’s home in Western Massachusetts, while weaving in Hawthorne’s lucid descriptions. This process would result in a series of painted, drawn and cut works on and with paper that would be installed in a local space with a history that could further expand the work. This project would extend and build upon my current artistic practice, as well as my connectivity to New England as a place of origin both for my family, for Hawthorne, and for an American consciousness. What I imagine I will find there is a barrage of fixed, linear narratives that after further exmination reveal the transitory and liminal space of the forest described by Hawthorne in “The Scarlet Letter.”