About

My name is Iona; this is me. I am the low-tech half of crackleunion.com. I like to work with pen and shoe polish, paint sticks and charcoal; encaustic; ink and marker. That is really oil, wax, and water. I also make lithographs when I’ve got the riches!

Seriously…

I often focus on existing narratives into which we mold ourselves over the course of our lives, and attempt to re-script some of these stories. I work with visual cliches that I use as ideograms, imbued with complex ideologies.  These are not, however, immutable (nor do I think their significances are identical for any two people.) My goal is to examine these stories through a personal lens, and attempt to rearticulate and reconstitute them. For this reason I’ve begun to work in serial & narrative form (although I’m not using words- for now.)  I use facebook photos (the vocabulary here being the “I” that we fashion for others and the stories we tell about ourselves, through select images- “curate our lives” is a phrase I’ve heard used). I also use Hollywood film stills, newspaper & magazine imagery; google images; and above all; memory and fantasy.