After big plans to provide a virtual tour of my new exhibition at Beaumont, I decided I would take my standard route: skip it entirely. Big mistake, big, huge. Here is a small selection from the 100 +/- pieces that hung in the Beaumont gallery space for 6 weeks. There were many new pieces, many usual suspects and familiar favorites, but save 1 or 2, I don’t believe these (below) have ever been posted here. I am a paper cutter, but a lousy photographer, so please excuse the muted colors, wacky perspectives, and the obligatory selfies caught in the glare.
I love, love, love Beaumont, and the wonderful women who take the reins and create the most carefree environment possible. Each time I take a show down I cannot wait to come back.
These pieces are still for sale, so feel free to message me for price information as I haven’t updated this information quite yet.
***One note: I’ve recieved some feedback about my “Untitled” piece depicting a rattlesnake strangling and suffocating the American flag; the rattlesnake inspired by the Gadsen, “Don’t Tread On
Me” flag that was designed in in 1775. From my, admittedly limited perspective on history, this flag was meant to symbolize resistance to a stranglehold by the British during the Revolutionary War. It has been trotted out throughout history and manipulated to represent any number of instances in which it was believed that “rights” were at risk of infringement. (Much the same way The Constitution has been… and for that matter, The Bible). I have heard that this rattlesnack and it’s original motto have become the de facto symbol for right-wing expression in terms of gun rights, a call for “small government,” and more recently, Trump’s America; an American, in my mind, that is a true perversion of a Democracy. This little piece of mine has received criticism because, “An American flag should always be depicted unfurled.” I’ve been cautioned that viewers might see it and assume that I am neo-right winger, sitting in my third floor studio capped with a
MAGA hat. I’ve even been told that the matting and (poor) framing choice further supports my interest in the “traditional.”
I left it “Untitled,” because I didn’t know what to call it. I only know this: I felt like, I still feel, that America is being overrun by Americans that hate Americans. I am agressively liberal. John sometimes jokes that my version of America is one in which everyone holds hands. Untrue, I hate holding hands. In fact, I haven’t felt patriotic for as long as I can remember, and the more and more I learn about the true history of the United States, the more I feel concerned and disturbed about what being American truly means. That being said, I have lived a life of ease, and I know that is much because of the rights I enjoy as a citizen of this country (and…. as a White, cis woman….). So, I cut this piece of an American flag being strangled and suffocated by a rattlesnack because in my mind, in the moment, it meant just that. We are suffocating ourselves. We are using the perversion of “our own” symbols of freedom to squash and sqelch freedom for all.
Because “art is art,” I am leaving it up. I’ve been asked to remove it, but I dislike censorship as much as dislike being misundertstood.
To be clear: Trump is a monster, and the only benefit that has come from his reign is that it has revealed the enemy hidden in plainclothes. The venomous, foaming hatred that has always surrounded us took centerstage, fresh from the shadows. These people represent the worst of America.
So put that in your pot and smoke it. (Because I think that should be legal, too, because I’m a tree hugging, crunchy dem).












