Learn more about my work and see some images in this Q and A on the Arkansas Art Scene Blog. I talk about moving to Arkansas, art, nature, papermaking and teaching.
Here is an excerpt:
AAS: You seem to have a strong connection to the land and the natural environment – and this really comes through in your art.
MCS: Since childhood I have felt a deep connection to nature. It feels like a biological or ancestral necessity for me. It’s been a challenge to develop an art practice that represents some of my experience with nature. To depict nature never seemed like enough. I remember obsessively drawing and painting the sky. But these representations never actually expressed my feeling of seeing and experiencing a dramatic sky. (I love Turner and other historic landscape paintings like the Hudson River School paintings.) There’s something about the ceaseless movement and change in nature that awes me. I love the cyclical patterns of the seasons. It was a massive moment in my development as an artist when I realized that by making paper by hand from plants I could literally and immediately include nature in my work. I didn’t know any papermakers back when I started. Now that I know many all over the country, my adoption of this medium seems like an obvious step. Now I specifically grow and collect many plants for paper including both bast fiber plants such as mulberry and hibiscus (using the stringy fibers between the bark and the inner core), and seed fibers like cotton, and leaf fibers like hosta, iris, daylily, and many others. As I mentioned, I add other items to my paper too. Large pieces of plants, old summer dresses, antique lace and hair from my horse’s tails. I love how these materials convey a sense of narrative, place, and time.
AAS: Your techniques capture beautifully the real and surreal at the same time – highly recognizable yet disorienting in a way.
MCS: The visual language of my work includes a mix of abstraction and representation. There are a lot of shifts in point of view. Sometimes my work moves more towards a chaotic abstraction and sometimes it’s easier to read. I’ve found aspects of each of the mediums I use that help create this language. I try to balance the movement of gestural paint and paper with the specificity and stillness of photography. Ultimately, I want to make work that resonates with people in emotional ways they feel are both true and hard to explain. This is also the work that I want to see. I remember tears streaming down my face while in a Munch exhibition or in front of a Rothko painting. I could never figure out why everyone wasn’t crying at these shows. I guess viewers aren't always ready to be open to artwork. In my own work, I seek a feeling that’s really hard to describe in ways that don’t sound cliche´. They are like the feeling of missing your Grandpa, or your old dog. Where you know things change and you are grateful for the present moment, but there’s some loss.