Portfolio > Icing

My work focuses on roles of domesticity and consumer culture. My current imagery centers on depictions of food, whether isolated in an image, or placed in a context, such as a grocery store.

To me, food is an intermediary between family history and body image. Certain foods serve as symbols, such as slabs of colorless meat, for the difficulty of family relationships in a context where the forced eating of what was on your plate signified obedience. Other works, such as my icing paintings, celebrate the ridiculous obsession my family has with cake and sweets within a family history of diabetes.

All of these works combine women’s roles of grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and sewing, with food. In particular, the icing paintings embody all of these roles; from the sewing of the fabric covers with fancy trims, to the shopping, cooking and cleaning associated with a home-made cake, to the trompe l’oeil representation of piped icing, which takes hours to perfect, merely to be destroyed in one delicious instant. In these paintings, I embrace the imperfections, such as air bubbles and asymmetrical forms in order to create images that are simultaneously dark and playful.

Purple Drop-Spin Flower
oil on fabric covered box
20" x 20" x 6"
2003
Trellis
oil on fabric covered box
20" x 20" x 6"
2003
Festooned Hearts
oil on fabric covered box
20" x 25" x 6"
2007
Pink Leopard
oil on primed fabric
15" x 24" x 6"
2009
Yellow Gingham
oil on fabric covered box
12" x 12" x 6"
2004
Cherries
oil on primed fabric
22" x 30" x 10"
2009
Spring Ruffles
oil on primed fabric
6.5" x 6.5" x 11"
2006
Gold Diamond
oil on fabric
20 x 20 x 8
2010
Purple Swirls
oil on fabric covered box
12" x 24" x 10"
2007
Eyelet Rose
oil on fabric covered box
14" x 14" x 6"
2004
Italian Wedding
oil on primed fabric
16" x 16" x 6.5"
2006
Golden
oil on fabric
25 x 49 x 6
2010
Blue Chintz
oil on primed fabric
30" x 30" x 6"
2009
Scallops
oil on primed fabric
15" x 15" x 15"
2010
Dots and Stripes
oil on fabric covered box
23" x 11" x 6.5"
2006
Over the Hill
oil on fabric covered box
26" x 41" x 6"
2004
Patriot
oil on primed fabric
19 x 38 x 6
2010
Patriot
oil on fabric
19 x 38 x 6
2010
Lily of the Valley
oil on fabric covered box
48" x 70" x 3"
2004