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Erin’s work is all about reinvention and restoration. The artist cuts up, groups and rearranges her paintings on paper and found papers in a process of transformation - an intentional act of breaking apart and putting things back together.  The process starts with color and texture and is additive and iterative - letting the pieces determine the final composition and shape of the pieces. She uses paper, with its ubiquity, ephemerality, and lack of intrinsic value, because it can be transformed from the ordinary to the extraordinary through the application of paint, the cutting of shapes, and in combination with other papers. Often the papers are sourced from other artists - students and collaborators - and this act of using paper that has passed through others hands is a way to create community and long distance collaboration. She is interested in the materiality and weight of paper, the surfaces it leaves behind when torn and removed, and the way colors can evoke memories of people and place. Erin approaches her work almost as an art restorer - completing shapes that have been cut, finding the forms under the layers, and matching the colors found with paint mixed directly on the surface.  This way of working is a direct result of Erin’s work as a caretaker for both her parents with early onset dementia. As her parents’ sense of self, autonomy, and connection to the world got smaller and more fragmented, Erin found beauty in reconstruction and in the careful placement of small things. 

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Erin has a BA in studio art and art history from Beloit College, and an MFA from California College of the Arts. As an undergraduate, her did an intensive study of traditional brush painting at Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata-shi, Japan. Erin is a faculty member of the 92nd Y School of the Arts in New York City and teaches collage and mixed media classes throughout the Bay Area. Erin has shown extensively in galleries across the country and her work is represented by the Roaring Artist Gallery, a virtual gallery showing the work of visionary women artists. Erin’s artwork is licensed and sold through West Elm, Minted, and Samsung.