From childhood, I’ve used art to tell help me make sense of the world, letting the forms of my experiences provide the framework for exploration. The dioramas I saw on rainy days at the American Museum of Natural History. Long days making cigar box scenarios and dollhouses. Irrigated sand cities and PlayDoh villages during carefree summers at the shore. Fascinating pages of an 1822 elephant folio of Hogarth prints. Degas’ polychrome Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer with real tutu. Greek and Roman statues. A cache of Pocket Library books on the Impressionists. Beloved Hummel figurines. Mathematical puzzles. Modeled images and illusionary structures combine to form the narrative element of my sculpture.

I have been influenced by Greek and Roman art, the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Spanish Painting, Dutch Painting and Impressionism. Maps as an abstract way of imagining and moving through space have always interested me. Folk art, architecture and technology provide reference and insight as well. My favorite artists include Rodin, Bruegel, Dürer and Rembrandt.

Clay is my preferred material. I like its flexibility and variety. Artists have always used clay. It is an ancient tradition and endures as a beautiful and fresh means of expression.

My work is created and seen through filters of memory and imagination. Imagined people in imagined spaces are my subjects. The works are usually landscapes or interiors, peopled or simply empty. Even when absent, people may be inferred as palpable presences. These landscapes and interiors are lived-in human scale spaces. I use perspective, projection and recession to help bring the viewer into the work.

Like Proust’s magic lantern, art illuminates the world, pointing inward or to distant places.