subject
Statement ’95

Form works with expression of emotion and ideas to create sculpture. Connection is the theme of my sculpture: conflict and reconciliation of opposites, the discovery, resolution and expression of the light within the dark and the dark within that. Solipsisms and fragmentation notwithstanding, we have much in common. My work focuses on making and exploring these connections.

The potential for unity among multiplicities intrigues me. Particulars are interesting both as parts of a whole and as generalities composed of further particulars. A chosen absolute will interract with a given relative, producing a unique perspective. Where cognizable structure and casual fatalism combine, systems and patterns provide context for the expression of dreams, visions and memories. Dynamic balance of form — concrete with abstract or organic with synthetic — juxtaposes a disparate incongruity, revealing concept and feeling.

Telling a story is one way I work. In relating non-linear, relational narratives and themes the figure may exist in space or be inferred. The form of space and its experience — the conjunction of subjective and objective — is my subject matter. For example:

Cross Division describes a space that moves from enclosure and compression through a distracting cross path to a relatively more open space. Although the expansive space appears smaller in perspective, it is filled with openings and possibility, yet also with anxiety. Several other of my sculptures embody this space including Corridor and Glacial Nepenthe.

This Is Not a Room is a place where walls are both openings and closings. They are flat and pictorial, like screens, yet dimensional and perspectival. The Magritte reference is that perception is not limited by form — an object could be or become something else entirely.

Vanishing Point, Perspective with Pipes and Unknown Family refer to a related theme.

Krater—The Atom was Split and the Earth Healed is about human capacity for renewal and regeneration. It is part of a series including Prometheus—There Are Giants On the Earth, Annunciation—Half-Life, Assumption/Burial and Hit and Run that explores metaphorical alternatives to various myths and stories.

Terra-cotta is my current medium. Its immediacy and strength appeal to me while its structural constraints challenge me. Although the focus for my work is in modeling, as my sculpture develops freely standing, becoming more about structure and gravity, I am also experimenting with different ways of conceptualizing and constructing. My involvement with drawing and the computer propels me to explore other tools of expression. The lightness and flexibility of various layered, assembled, collaged and cast materials — clay, wax, plaster, wood, plastics, metal, found objects, paper and fiber — are attractive to me as I try out different ways of integrating my ideas and emotion with form.