My formal introduction to art began in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Cambridge Center for Art Education with a figure drawing class purchased for me by a friend for my birthday. This class ignited in me a passion for drawing, which then opened a whole new creative world. Encouraged to pursue a more challenging course load by my teachers, I subsequently matriculated as a full-time day student at School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1990. There I studied with Annette Lemieux, Mag Harris, and David Kelly, who each conducted frequent critiques, effectively helping me connect concepts with language and materials. Nonetheless, despite the many things I learned there, my art practice is mainly self-taught and my influences wide-ranging.


Currently I keep a studio in Red Hook Brooklyn, which I’ve maintained for over 20 years. My full-time day job as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the past 30 years has remained an enduring source of inspiration for my art, leading to the creation of a series of autobiographical works and bodies of works based on my experience working there—first in 2010 with the construction of a life-size doll of myself dubbed “Emilie Doppelgänger”, which I was photographed interacting with in various situations in a series of photographs taken by my partner Nick Rowan. Subsequent to that project, which took place over several years, I embarked on another long-term, playful, and at times irreverent photo series about the many facets and guises of my work life titled “On Break: Random Acts of Defiance in the Workplace”. I also created other work based on my day job for the Met’s recurring employee art show—often held annually or biannually—including a giant paper airplane pieced together from late-notice tickets I and my co-workers received when late to work, a monumental sculpture made from dry cleaning bags housing serviced uniforms, celebrating my 50th birthday, a giant upholstered chair titled “Ceremonial Sit Down Throne” Commemorating 25 years of standing guard, and a large fabric piece made from recycled Met security guard uniforms, dedicated to the entire Met staff, appropriately titled “Anthem”. Most recently, in 2024, I created a second large textile piece made from recycled Met security guard uniforms titled “FLAG;  Friendship, Love, Activism, Grace”.

 

In 2021, I was featured in the Netflix series “Worn Stories” in which I was interviewed about the cultural and personal significance of my security guard uniform and how it helps me do my job. In 2022, I undertook an activist campaign for greater wage transparency at the Met, for which I designed and had buttons made for my co-workers to wear showing the number of years they have worked at the Met alongside their hourly wage—which elicited a write-up in the New York Times describing my somewhat controversial and pathbreaking project as well as my art and life as a Met security guard. And last year a work of mine was chosen to be among works by more than 200 Brooklyn artists to be in the Brooklyn Museum’s “Brooklyn Artists Exhibition " celebrating the museum’s 200th anniversary.