My father served in the Air Force during my childhood and moved every two years: new home, new people, new environment. My new environments were rich in patterns that helped to trigger memories associated with each new location. My mother, who was from England, influenced my love of teacup patterns through the daily ritual of "teatime". For me patterns are linked to the past and to specific periods of time, like Art Deco wallpaper patterns to the 1920s. Patterns are iconic styles that are associations at a universal level, both social and cultural, and on a personal level. This series started with my fondness of patterns, my British heritage, my three china patterns, and military service history  in my family. The military history was the final element that helped to formulate the direction of this body of work. The wallpaper and teacup patterns were the vehicles used to transport viewers to a specific time in history or what I refer to as historical place markers. The plexiglass design is an abstracted form of a map, specific to each major war of this time period. The number at the top of each plexiglass refers to the shocking number of human casualties associated with each war. The series, titled "Patterns of the Past", speaks of the constant pattern of major conflicts throughout history, each one with great lose of life.

     The series was envisioned to shed light on specific major wars, conflicts, or events throughout history and to remind us collectively the total human loss during each conflict. The work makes connections to past events through the use of time specific wallpaper and china patterns, an etched number, and an abstracted map. The wallpaper pattern and teacup pattern are painted onto each panel and the number and abstracted map are etched into a plexiglass layer.  The wallpaper and teacups are symbolic of the domestic past or front and the plexiglass is symbolic for the war front. The series, Patterns of the Past, relies on light to connect the domestic past to the war past through shadows of maps and numbers that illustrate and quantify human loss. The primary take away is making historical connections through patterns, etched maps and numbers, and even the titles, to trigger a memory of an event or conflict that caused great loss to humanity.