The Mahabharata
I teach Asian Religions at Hunter College. One of my colleagues,  Dr. Vishwa Adluri, has been working on a translation of the Hindu epic The Mahabharata from the original Sanskrit. Together, we came up with an idea to create images to accompany his translation. Rather than make overt representational images, I sought to create something that used the same philosophical concepts found in the text. The images below are made from photo paper that was exposed to the night sky and then developed. The resulting black emulsion actually contains ink of all the possible colors in a color photograph. I set out to release the color using acids and bleach- a process that I was only nominally in control over. The white areas in the image are the white of the photo paper. Like eternal truth, the white represents what  is possible, and what can only be seen when darkness and confusion are cleared away. This project won a Regents Prize from the City University of New York, and was featured in a chapter in Dr. Michael Jackson's book Harmattan.

Shattered Objects, Shattered People
It has been my privilege to study religion with a group of Christian ministers, Buddhist monks and chaplains. They work in prisons and pediatric oncology hospitals, refugee camps, psychiatric wards and hospice facilities- they go where they are needed most. From them I have learned that people who have undergone trauma face the nearly insurmountable task of finding a way to put a shattered self back together. This shattered self can never be put back together the way it was before the trauma. The spiritual caregiver to help them find ways to discover a new self, one that includes the broken parts. Working in a variety of media, I made these sculptures out of whatever fragile material was at hand, never seeking to repair the broken thing, but always to put it together in new configurations.  
Photo credits: Nicole Pierce 

What happens when a wounded, broken or traumatized person ignores the places where they have been hurt? I wanted to explore this question and at the same time create a visual record of the process. I started with the basic idea that unacknowledged subconscious forces do not go away, but rather tend grow and gain power in the dark. Drawing a straight line from concept to material was fairly clear: I needed something that grows in the dark. I had a Darth Vader helmet laying around (as one does) so I covered it with a slurry of bread and Elmer's Glue. (I was advised by a microbiologist to use the expensive, organic bread. Because the expensive bread does not have preservatives, it contains millions of mold spores. I think I paid $7 for this loaf at Whole Foods.) I then put the whole messy thing in a plastic bin and stuck in a dark closet for ten days. These are the results.