Conegliano, Italy 2010.
Art. It happened to me: accidental and disruptive.
Initially, it was a way to "build what I could think," then became a way of thinking, and later, appeared autonomous and independent - if conterminous to theory and theorizing, activism and social engagement.
First generation of immigrants in suburban environs, art existed but its making was remote, its makers unknown. Craft was available; I began: sewing, spinning, quilting, weaving, embroidering and building class projects - to escape writing whenever possible - in my grandfather's basement workshop: a soldiered wire skier, a paper mache tribal mask, an old seaman from a favorite photograph of my father's, the Roman Catacombs under St Paul's.
Fast forward to college and my first encounter with semiotics. It was native. A formal language for my informal existence. The advent of the word 'multiculturalism' and my self-designed major, "An Anthropology of Power," resulting in my graduating thesis: "The Spectacle of Greece: A Semiotic Analysis of The West's Construction of Itself."
Another leap in time and place, I arrive in NYC surrounded and overwhelmed by extended ranges of possible being, doing and thinking. "To build what I can think" becomes a mantra. I pursue the means and mechanisms of the nonverbal using found objects and later creating conceptual installations that redefine and/or expand conceptual horizons including: Missing Modules, Sins of the New Millennium, Narrative Alchemy and Convergent Futures...