Canephorae and caryatids, working women and goddesses — those female figures that support the structure of human society— inform this 8-foot high drawing of a caryatid-like figure “wearing” a Corinthian capital, which I produced while in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. In a 2012 exhibition at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, "Structure and Metaphor," this drawing was accompanied by a series of smaller drawings ranging from one of the Erechtheion caryatids to a Demeter votive effigy.

 

The Cornice Portraits invert architectural theories, such as those of Jacques-François Blondel, which critique the profiles of column capitals and cornices according to classical proportions of an idealized human face. Instead, the profiles in these drawings are derived from the “imperfect” features of actual men and women.

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Appiades is a series of mixed-media prints drawn from my photographs of fountains in Italy, which links women’s bodies with architecture and mythology. From the Greek and Roman naiads to Our Lady of Lourdes, women have been associated with water, the most indispensable resource for life.

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In Karsashian/Bernini, I pair Kim Kardashian's Barbie-like physical proportions with one of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Solomonic columns at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City  As in the silk Comparisons, I am searching out equivalents in form between flesh and stone.