Context

We live now in the wake of a Cartesian Paradigm. The loss of stillness, imagination, critical thinking, and sensuality are collateral damage in the epidemic of global destruction we have wrought. Collectively, we continue to behave in our destructive ways in spite of the facts. Art and Earth define us as human beings. The rupture of connection with either renders us senseless and therefore only brutal.

Art can be a transformer: it can bypass rational, linear processes; it can stir the heart. Art can be the matter of the unconscious and therefore work as dreams do - a vision interrupting the quotidian, even the narcosis that numbs us. Intentionally eschewing all that is technological, my work stands in defiance of the dangerous inundations of our disembodied digital age and our insatiable cravings for perpetual, reiterative stimulation.

Work

I intend my sculptures to be koans: hybrid, paradoxical constructions that invite an opening in consciousness, an alteration of our patterned constructs, an illumination for our dulled perceptions. I am interested in contributing to the vocabulary that will tell a new collective story: a new mythology that redefines mystery, sensuality, beauty, stillness, and imagination as crucial to our earthly co-existence. The imagery in my work is archetypal and like dreams, it is part familiar and part unknown. Both koan and dream require contemplation and a turning inward for understanding.

I draw what I do not know - what I cannot yet see. I work on the image with the paper on the floor and the wall using my forearm, palm, and fingers as tools - as extensions of core. Drawing frees me from the constraints of gravity, mass, and the rigors of construction. It is a dance, rendering still form to movement.

Materials and Process

The materials I use are both substance and symbol yet all are ordinary. I harvest them from both nature and culture. Many are gathered from the land I live on. The love that I have of my materials - their sources as well as the processes associated with transforming them - is about polishing the beauty of the mundane and the manifestation of change. The repetitive, meditative aspects associated with the crafting of my work are intentional, identifying the creative process as a devotional practice

I have worked as a gardener for as long as I have as a sculptor. The rhythm of my studio work is influenced by the seasons and weather. The land gives me a model of creation, destruction, and fallowness - an enduring trinity, a paradox that sustains me. It is a sanctuary that I carefully tend. Art and Earth define us as human beings; the rupture of connection with either renders us senseless and therefore only brutal.