Monica is an artist and educator based in New York and Connecticut. Since 2000, she has taught architecture, design, visual art, and digital media at the high school and college levels.
My work fluctuates between disfiguration and figuration, and familiar objects oscillate between layered fields. The picture plane is amassed to create spatial amplification and zones of deletion." I use accumulation and deletion to explore the instability of perception. Layers of paint are applied to expose how form is continuously negotiated. I consider how tectonic and bodily systems mirror one another in their capacity for adaptation, distortion, and reconstruction.
The Erasure series comprises several interrelated strands: Erasure, Erasure Smash, Erasure Cipher, Erasure Reconfigure, Erasure Between Forms, and Erasure Pop-Out. Across these bodies of work. I construct speculative anatomies through architectural systems, using erasure not to eliminate the body but to render identity spatial, unstable, and continually reconfigured.
The figure appears to be both reconstituting and disintegrating. Two elements persist across many iterations: an exposed intestinal interior and an open mouth. These corporeal constants suggest cycles of intake and expulsion, consumption and release. Dense gestural accumulations, chromatic tension, and exaggerated contours allow the body to emerge without fully resolving. Thick lines establish structure while disrupting its boundaries, leaving the figure suspended between formation and collapse.
Each strand tests this instability in a different way. In Smash and Reconfigure, fragmentation accelerates through collision, compression, and recombination. In Cipher, the line functions as an underlying code that holds forms together on the verge of dispersal. Between Forms occupies the threshold between recognizable anatomy and open spatial structure, while Pop-Out extends painted fragments beyond the canvas into reliefs, objects, and spatial propositions. Primary colors punctuate the work as disruptive agents, directing movement while resisting narrative closure.
Across the series, erasure functions not as subtraction but as a generative methodology. It is a way of making through uncertainty, contradiction, and change. Rather than proposing a stable image of the body, the work treats form and identity as contingent, provisional, and perpetually in formation.
The species' work utilizes concepts derived from observations that demonstrate biological systems. Projects are grown into architectonic composites that generate hyper-articulated forms and spatial fields. The species' work is grown through varied aggregation at multiple scales. The objective is to produce new organisms and organizational methods that reflect morphogenetic evolutionary traits.
The photography captures spontaneous moments, performances, and atmospheric conditions.
Education
In process...anticipated graduation Spring 2027
Master's in Education in Private School Leadership, Teachers' College, Columbia University
Bachelor of Architecture, Cooper Union,
Master's of Advanced Architectural Design, Columbia University.
CTE UC Berkeley Extension, Teaching Credential California: Architecture/Engineering, Arts/ Media.
Teaching
- Rye Country Day School, Rye, NY | August 2023-Present
Visual Arts Department Chair, PreK-12 | Upper School Social Justice Co-Coordinator, 2024-2026
- Milken Community School, Los Angeles, CA | August 2021-July 2023
Art Department Instructional Leader (Department Chair), Middle and Upper School
- The Athenian School, Danville, CA | August 2017-July 2021
Upper School Art and Design Educator
- San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco, CA | October 2016-March 2017
Career Technical Education Academy Coordinator, Media Arts
- Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, San Francisco, CA | June 2015-June 2016
Founding Art Director, Career Technical Education Design Pathway
- City College of San Francisco | Adjunct Faculty | September 2014-June 2016
- Academy of Art University | Studio Coordinator, Graduate Studies | September 2008-December 2014
- California College of the Arts | Adjunct Professor | September 2008-December 2010
- University of California, Berkeley | Lecturer, Studio Coordinator, and Visiting Assistant Professor, Summer Programs 2003, 2008, 2009, 2011
- Washington State University School of Architecture | Assistant Professor | August 2007-May 2008
- Barnard College and Columbia University | Adjunct Assistant Professor | January 2004-May 2007
- Florida International University | Lower Division Coordinator and Assistant Professor | August 2004-May 2005
- Pratt Institute School of Architecture | Visiting Assistant Professor | September 2000-May 2003
