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Sculpture and Mixed Media
My sculpted work explores the emotions through allegory, mythology,
fairy tales and natural forms.
The common thread which runs through my work is the allusion to
the passage of time. Whether mixed media or earthenware, figurative
or abstract; Time is used as a symbol of mortality, endurance, vulnerability,
and interconnectedness.
The commissioned bronze sculpture Emergence,
represents a winged figure emerging from a tree, bark peeling back
from its flesh, illustrating the emotional drive required to pull
oneself out of any safe but stultifying experience into one of transcendence;
not only the difficulty of that transitional state, but my fervent
belief in the power of hope.
Some work explores triumphs and losses through mythic
figures and gods, as in Icarus and Demeter’s Sorrow.
Woe, Lies II, and Mask expose our nightmare fears. Each face
symbolizes all faces, each line and eyelash tells a tale, whether
the words are screamed or whispered.
Many of my sculptures show the concave and the convex
of a face, each side shaped by, but hidden from, the other. The
positive and negative are unified with earth colors and natural
textures to illustrate our sunlight and shadow selves. The shells
and branches, hornets’ nests and rocks, draped fabric and feathers
are all sculpted directly in clay, not from molds. When text is
added, as in Recto Verso or New Tools for Hard Times,
it is unmistakably language, but indecipherable: like hearing people
speak without knowing precisely what they are saying.
The figurative sculptures are made in clay and either fired or
cast in bronze or resin.
Note: The circular motif of the Mandala forms represents the snake
swallowing its tail, the birth/death cycle and the reward of losing
oneself in the study of the circle.
Photography
I see the world around me as either very layered and
complex or very simple.
As an example, Buffalo Vest is quite straightforward
yet the patina of time and the wearer’s personal history are
evident in the scratched leather and the buffalo head buttons on
his vest.
The passage of time is a prevalent theme in all of my work; my awareness
of time has little to do with actual chronology, but is composed
of fragments of memory superimposed upon the present. This patch
of hot sunlight here reminds me of being at the beach four years
ago, this shiny black bumper hearkens back to the Mary Jane shoes
of a girl in my kindergarten class, in this reflection I can see
both the slick stones in the river bed and also the clouds above…
Perception of the present is composed of these layers
and fragments:
I explore them visually, trying to catch those evanescent images,
stopping a moment in time with a camera.
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