For the past five years I have been tracking my experience and daily events as they manifest into memory. I honor my everyday experiences and seemingly insignificant events for the role that they play and the impact that they have on, my ever-changing, present moment. By tracking these events through paint, digital video, audiotape, and embroidery, I have been able to hold on to a little longer, understand a little better, and have physical evidence of, my existence.

In a diaristic manner, I record the state of my life on a daily basis using paint. Events both minor and major, anxieties, and emotions felt from day to day are transformed into abstracted symbols. With each day the paintings progress, and a new layer of symbols and patterning both cover and transform the layers left from the day before. I use sanding and erasures to reveal layers that still hold importance for me, and often use a figure-ground reversal to create shape out of past experiences. As days go by and the paintings as well as the animations move through compositions, early layers become vague and disrupted as well as enhanced by new information. My final product is an intensely layered record of my current state of being bearing the history of my recent past. In this way I am trying to make visible the transformation of my experiences into that of memories.

My interest in memory has been fueled by my personal experience with memory loss. My father has been diagnosed with a brain disorder that has left him with no short-term memory. Through his experience I have gained an appreciation for the mundane and an interest in both short and long term memories. I question our relationships to both short and long-term memory. When do our daily experiences transform into our recollections of the past? How much of our long-term memory is a sum of small insignificant events? How do short and long term memory influence each other, and what is lost in the translation? If we loose our short-term memory, is it just a matter of time before we ultimately loose our long-term memory? What is the impact of memory on our concept of ourselves and our placement within the world.

It is through this investigation into memory that my work has come to deal more exclusively with short-term memory; the supposedly insignificant events that make up our days, and, more importantly, our understandings of the present moment and consequently, ourselves. I track my memories, being watchful for events and specific memories to be lost, wondering what aspects of my life will persevere and make it into the “long term” category. I have come to see my work as both a record of my memories, as well as physical attempts at holding on to something that is more significant and elusive than I had previously thought it to be.