is an emerging artist working in multi-media living in Washington DC. With an MFA from The University Of The Arts and a BFA from American University, she has shown her work in many regional group exhibitions. For Karen Joan Topping, things such as toys and candy are the tools and materials for the making of art. She creates installations, sculptures and video projections engaging in a spirit of play and exploration that are inquiries into attention, emotion and judgment as much as they are investigations of aesthetic practices. By using seductive and nostalgic objects from childhood, she examines how fantasy, memory, hope and anxiety can be explored in space and time as well as symbol and form.