Artist's Statement

“Art making is a ritual, perhaps the most valid—if elitist—one left to this society . . . art has a social significance and a social function, which might be defined as a transformation of desire into reality, reality into dreams and change, and back again.”
- Lucy Lippard, Overlay

I explore the connection between nature and artifacts, ritual and obsessions, and altered states of consciousness through painting, drawing, sculpture, installations, and large-scale public art projects. The use of new, unfamiliar materials challenges my own perceptions and expectations. The objects that I produce bear traces of my obsessive and meditative artistic practice, and they become new relics, created from personal experience, yet borrowing from archetypal artistic forms. Presently I am working with cast glass sculpture to create a landscape of urban artifacts, such as an I-pod and cell phone, among other objects, that will be embedded in the pavement of a public park, resonant of an archaeological dig. I am also working with glass tile mosaic, bronze, and welded steel. I am experimenting with archival digital printing mounted on wood panels that are surfaced with mica particles. In the past I have worked with fiberglass, ceramic, carved wood, living plants, found objects, etching, drawing, and photography.

Questions of transition, transformation, erosion, and metamorphosis are repeated themes in my work. The mural-size landscape paintings, acrylic on linen, capture a particular moment in time, a suspended quality of light and atmosphere against the slower background of natural time. I try to convey how perception shifts as we move through space. The large paintings engage the viewer’s peripheral vision evoking a feeling of motion, of falling, or vortexes.

I respect the power of art to affect one psychologically, psychically, and emotionally.