Give Me My Robe, Put On My Crown, 2007
Still from Give Me My Robe, Put On My Crown Digital Video,
30 mins
SPLIT SCREEN, 2005-2006
Still from SPLIT SCREEN Digital Video,
30 mins
Official Selection for 2007 KynnysKino Film Festival, Helsinki
Monument to Incompleteness/3, 2000
Piano, text, sheet music, recording of Ravel's Piano
Concerto for the Left Hand played by Paul Wittgenstein, 1939
Dimensions variable
Monument to Incompleteness/2, 2000
Press molded and hand built stoneware glazed & fired
25 x 35cm
Beautiful Pictures, 2002
Detail from Aesthetics of Prosthetics installation for Adorn,Equip:
59.4 x 84.1cm
Monument to Incompleteness/1, 2000
Press molded and hand built
stoneware glazed & fired
60cm high
Statement
I was born in San Francisco in 1949, and lived in 7 countries before the age of 16. In 1968 when I was at St. Martin's School of Art, I lost my left leg in a traffic accident. My work did not consciously reflect my disability until 1999, when funding from the Bader Foundation enabled me to explore my experience of prosthetics in a series called Monuments to Incompleteness. This led to commissions, residencies and exhibitions, including Nottingham's Vital festival, and Leicester City Art Gallery's Adorn,Equip. In my current practice I continue to use a variety of different media to explore themes informed by my disability and its effect on self-image. In my 2005 film SPLIT SCREEN I explored representations of disability in film through the cutting and juxtaposing of found footage. In my 2007 film Give Me My Robe, Put On My Crown I worked in collaboration with Clean Break students to explore the transforming effect of live performance on self-image and identity.
The power of moving image to engage participants and viewers continues to enthral me; I am now in the process of developing a film project that examines the complexities of both using and making a prosthesis in collaboration with Strathclyde University' s Centre for Prosthetics & Orthotics.