Merry

As an East Tennessee native who loves to travel, I am intrigued by the commonalities found in diverse cultures.   My work often focuses on the experiences that are shared by all people, the things that tie us together.  It could be easy in a time of seemingly increasing division to forget that commonality, to focus excessively on our differences and points of disagreement – easy, but not always helpful.  My current work is an exploration of our similarities, using mirror images to convey my belief that even when differences seem great at first glance we are all much alike just under the surface – that we all have the same needs and desires.

These pieces are created using only paper and glue; the design was hand-cut from white paper and pasted onto black paper to form the mirror image.  I love working in cut paper; it is a very tactile art form and lends itself very well to the subject matter.  It also matters to me that this is a very egalitarian method of creating art, in the sense that nearly everyone has access to paper – making it very suitable for art focused on our shared humanity.