Artist's Statement

An artist statement in two parts:

A conversation about art -- or perhaps nothing at all

The fire burns low and the moon has slunk away behind the clouds. Rain is

coming soon. The night has gotten old and will fade, but there is still drinking to

do. The bottle passes back and forth slowly, pausing to sit companionably at your

side before making another circuit.  

“When did you stop believing in Magic?”

The question comes after a comfortable lull in the conversation. Normally, I

would brush off the question with a non-answer or a joke, but it’s late, and if you

can’t tell the truth over a bottle of whiskey and a campfire then I figure you can’t

tell it anywhere.  

“I dunno . . . Maybe when I was 11 or 12.  After Alex died.”

“What if it is still out there, just waiting for you to believe again?”

I chuckle and pull long and hard on the bottle that had been sitting beside me.

“Like Tinkerbell and shit?”

I stand slowly, making sure that my world will not go spinning topsily away, raise

my hands to the sky and shout,

“I don’t believe in Fairies!”  

The shouts echo softly in the woods, each one ringing quieter and with more

sadness as they fade.  

“Maybe you should.”  

His words are soft and sad and he reaches for the bottle, taking a pull to match

mine. It will be empty soon and, like the moon, the conversation will fade.

I have always been searching for something.  I have never quite found it.  Visual languages and invented geometries intrigue me.  I am a lover of material and process but not for the sake of itself.   The idea of the journey has always been intrinsic to my work.   I want to take the viewer into imagined spaces and times.  Implying motion, mysticism and invoking the intangibility of certain places.  

Where does the inner dialogue live?  How does one show that dialogue to the world without telling them about it?  My work implies motion while inviting stillness.  If you throw a rock into a pond – which part is the most beautiful?  The graceful arc of a rock in flight, the eventual victory of gravity, the chaos of water splashing, the ripples reverberating through the pond or the inevitable stillness that comes last.   

I try to answer these questions.  I am drawn to repetitive shapes and processes.  I typically work in a wide variety of materials; they all have textures and hues that I love.  I believe each part of the art making process should be beautiful.   Objects that are made with intention in each stage of creation have more resonance and spiritual weight.  I hope the art asks more than it answers.  That the viewer is left with questions.   For perhaps a small moment the art takes the audience to an unexpected place on an unexpected journey.