"Look, Alternative Facts are not facts"

SAQA NJ + NY Regional Exhibition
byContrast: Apparent Contradictions

The oxymoron "alternative facts" gained prominence after Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to President trump, used it during a January 2017 interview on Meet the Press. Intending to defend White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statement about the attendance numbers at donald trump's first inauguration, she failed to report factual estimates of the ironically small crowd.

Journalist Chuck Todd, the show's moderator, promptly countered, "Alternative facts are not facts—they're falsehoods". Today, that phrase reflects a broader inclination of degraded public discourse where falsehoods are presented as alternative truths.

According to actual estimates of crowd attendance generated from public surveillance and mass transportation use, approximately 1.8 million people attended President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, approximately 500,000 attended the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC, and approximately 160,000 attended President donald trump’s first inauguration. Each figure depicts approximately 100,000 people, comparing the crowd participants at three major events that took place on the National Mall.

Inside Complements Outside

byCONTRAST NJ+NY Regional Exhibition

Contrast is the degree to which elements vary from surrounding stimuli. Increasing contrast allows us to identify and distinguish between stimuli—opposites attract attention and permit comprehension. Complementary color schemes (red-green, blue-orange, and yellow-purple) result in a whimsical yet harmonious composition.

In the popular version of the Ebbinghaus Illusion (an illusory contrast of size perception), two circles of identical size are placed near each other. Because the first is surrounded by large circles and the second is surrounded by small circles, the first central circle appears smaller than the second central circle. In my configuration, the flowers represent the circles in the Ebbinghaus Illusion. All of the flower petals are the same red color and shape, surrounding purple flower centers of the same color, size, and shape. Because of the size and distance of the petals relative to the purple centers, viewers perceive the purple circular shapes as different.

Red is for Metaphor

SAQA Global Exhibition (virtual gallery)
What a Ride!

Red is a color that visually communicates various situations, emotions, and conditions. This raw-edge appliquéd, machine-quilted composition is comprised of the artist’s hand-dyed fabrics. The work relates the myriad of actualities that come to mind when one sees that particular hue—passion, anxiety, sacrifice, danger, anger, temperature, chaos, and valor…all of which have their own experiences tied to the expected ups and downs or the unexpected flips and twists as one travels through time and space—often unknowingly.