Artist Statement
Vladimir Nabokov wrote in Pale Fire,
“Precautions to be taken in the case
Of freak reincarnation: what to do
On suddenly discovering that you
Are now a young and vulnerable toad
Plump in the middle of a busy road…”
This series of pencil drawings, entitled The Ne’er-Do-Wells, are based on the mugshots of common thieves, pickpockets, and safe breakers from the early 20th century and the freak reincarnation that they find themselves in now. The animals in each of the drawings represent the positive and negative aspects of the natural and supernatural world. They act as guardians and protectors or they can represent something harmful, dangerous or even deceiving to each of these men.
Artist Bio
After taking a Modernist art course during a study abroad program at Manchester Metropolitan University in 1995, I changed my focus from literature to art and received an MA in Studio Arts from New York University in 2000. Since 2002, I’ve been working as a teaching artist for people with autism at Autism Services, Inc. where I’ve had the unique opportunity to work side by side with many instinctually driven artists and have been able to curate over fifty exhibitions of their work throughout the Western New York region, including the 2015 three person T-Shirt On TV exhibition at Big Orbit Gallery. In 2008, I wrote and recorded a full length album of original music for a project called Here Come the Comets. The album won best album of the year by Buffalo Spree and the material was performed live at the Burchfield Penny Art Center in November of 2010. From 2011-2014, I began writing and recording original sound designs for a number of Torn Space Theater productions including the site specific Procession, written and directed by Dan Shanahan and A Clockwork Orange, directed by David Oliver, which won an Artie Award for best production. After many years of abstract painting, I changed my focus to pencil drawing in the beginning of 2014.