Erica L. Eaton, MSW, MFA, PhD Artist, Educator, Activist
 
I value art for its ability to create a kind of knowledge. Art allows us to look at something in a new way. I do not set out to represent what is already known, but to look at what is there through different lenses. Art can tell stories that otherwise remain untold. We are able say things that would otherwise be unspeakable and hear from multiple perspectives. Art is a way to test a thesis. As often as not I am faced with an opening of possibilities rather than any definite conclusion. Time based and installation works draw us into these possibilities using sound, light, space and motion. Visual associations create meaning using histories, dreams, visions and emotion. The marrying of these elements in unexpected juxtapositions can destabilize the compulsion to stay with the familiar and allow the incomplete and uncertain to be savored and explored… My work attempts to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. I am fascinated with how people make meaning, and how that meaning is applied in our lived lives. At its core my work deals with the relationships between memory, nostalgia and meaning and how this complex web plays out socially, politically and emotionally. At its most obvious, my work deals with issues that I am passionate and curious about: race, gender, sexual orientation, class, mass amnesia, the effects of new technologies on our collective consciousness and visions for creating new possibilities.