Bio
The Dictionary Poem Project is artwork that I make outside my usual studio practice which at this writing is focused mainly on three dimensional forms.
Thematically all my work grapples with the relationship between language and object or image. As its evolved, the artwork ranges from small scale fetish-like figures accompanied by poems, to large scale installations of poetry and objects, to wall panels meditating on the evolution of the modern alphabet, to more recent sculptural pieces that are both ideas and primordial forms.
My career as an artist, writer and an interdisciplinary curricula specialist has been driven by my interests in art, language and arts education. I received a Project Room Grant from the Forum for Contemporary Art now the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis where I had a one-person show of poetry and sculpture titled Girlslife: Artifacts and Testimony. I have had solo exhibits at the Schmidt Art Center, Belleville IL, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art and Duane Reed Gallery both in St. Louis.
My poems have been published in numerous journals. I have taught and supervised teachers in the public schools and worked at the St. Louis Art Museum as a museum educator in the Arts in the Basic Curriculum Program. I am the author and project manager of Metro Arts in Transit’s Public Art Curriculum Kit http://www.stlpack.org/AIT which was supported by both a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a St. Louis Regional Arts Commission grant. I am the coauthor and project manager of the St. Louis Public Art Curriculum Kit http://www.stlpack.org/ which is a national model for interdisciplinary arts education. Both of these kits are interdisciplinary, free, online educational resources for teachers and the general public.
My work is in private collections in California, Missouri, New Jersey, Washington DC, North Carolina, Michigan, Oregon, New Mexico and New York as well as in Washington University’s Special Collections, The Writer’s Place in Kansas City and the Mitchell Museum in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. To learn more, check out my website www.rootlanguage.com. Here you will find a chronology of my work, links to critical reviews and other professional information.
I have an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and master’s degrees from Washington University and Webster University, both in St. Louis. I’m a full-time studio artist in St. Louis, Missouri where I live with my husband Robert Lander who is a luthier.
Get in touch
To learn more about this project or where you can see the work, don’t hesitate in reaching out via email.