This series of work was inspired while reading the book "Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World" by Jack Weatherford. 

I think about all the resources: clay, gold, silver, (not to mention food technology, medicine, and animals) taken from the Americas and shipped back to respective European countries during colonization. These resources were used to make goods such as chinaware with elaborate gilding, floral patterns, and specifically for use by Western culture. 

The gold used in gilding makes might have been taken from Native Americans as it was mined. Made into a plate they couldn't afford or probably had little access to or use for- which, in modern times, now languishes on a thrift store shelf (or landfills when thrift stores decide it won't sell). Forgotten, chipped, not useful in the eyes of today's world...far-distanced in history's memory from the land the resources were taken from and yet back on American soil where it might have originated.  

Found or gifted dish-ware is reimagined by conversing with the original China paint on the forms, while adding my own visual language formed by research and respect of my Native ancestry and communities from which such resources and life-ways were taken. 

I, too, am a mix of culture. I, too, have been removed by time, culture, and generational distance from tribal lands. 

The plates and patterns question and converse about what it looks like to put Western objects back in Native hands, albeit also Western descent, and reinterpret them by the diaspora of people who (without say) contributed a diaspora of material goods to the benefit of the world at large. 

This is a constantly morphing body of work- as plates are taken to private collections, new ones join.

 It's been displayed in large groupings, in a solitary line, single plates paired with other mixed media works, or in smaller groupings. 

Each plate is its own entity while still conversing and contributing to the whole; just like any tribe, nation, or community. 

Portfolio of Paintings Previously in Installation