ARTIST STATEMENT

In a world filled with disorder and clamor of people and machinery I find refuge and balance by experiencing the power and beauty in the natural world. My first introduction to sculpture may well have been the carved rocks my father carried up from our stream and placed in the garden. Naturally carved geological formations certainly provided the abstract influence on the core of my work.

Traveling often becomes a search to see sculptured rocks, canyons and caves; these water and wind created spaces are intriguing, spiritual and mysterious to me. I often create an enclosure or sanctuary of some sort, frequently produced with the use of several forms. Sometimes the sculptures are large enough to enter in reality. In other work the spaces can only be entered through the mind’s eye. My connections with the earth as a hiker and a gardener bring me joy and feelings of renewal. Both are expressed in my different series of sculpture.

Recently, I have been examining a more intimate aspect of the natural world, the vast diversity of seedpods with their inherent promise of a future. The complexity, color and variety of these protective covers are often astounding and supernatural in appearance. I became drawn to the somber beauty of dried, opened and empty shells, rather than the more colorful and sensuous growing ones. In my mind the empty pods became metaphors for many things: species extinction, barren nests, and the destruction of habitats and shelters - loss in general. They resonate more with today's reality -  humanities destruction of the natural world.