To me working in the abstract is to aim for the essence. From the color, texture and feeling of every day materials, that which often goes unnoticed becomes beauty experienced.

I believe it is the role of the artist is to open the gap toward our highest evolution; to explore beyond known and mapped territories. This path is marked by intuition, inspiration, and feeling. When moving in the abstract I exist in this realm, and hope the art I return with can help mark the way.

For the most part it is in the indefinable that my work is born - an effort to communicate passion, inspiration, rapture, restlessness. My canvas of steel introduces an entire universe of chance and coincidence. Although the process is unpredictable, the idea or image I hold inside releases itself in surprising ways, as a new expression of feeling. Only by releasing the mind does creativity flow through, coaxing the potential from the collaboration between chance and vision.

Metal and the evidence of manipulating metal display a myriad of wonderful and unique properties. I highlight these to unveil the warmth and fragility held in the rugged rawness and translate the root of inspiration in new, innovative ways. Sometimes the work requires only a guiding hand through the maze of inspiration. In the creation of other pieces there is a period of introduction, the material rejecting everything but the ideal.

It is my hope that the work carries the viewer into the realm of possibility from which it was born.

Lawrence Galleries, Sheridan and Salishan, OR
Lahaina Galleries, Maui, The Big Island, Newport Beach, Bend
The Art Spirit Gallery, Coeur d'Alene, ID
Beyond the Perimeter Gallery, John Day, OR
Kebanu Gallery, Bend, OR
Art & Soul Gallery, Fort Collins, CO

Featured Artist, June 2009, Lahaina Gallery, Bend, OR
Featured Artist, September 2008, Kebanu, Bend
Fall Festival, Bend, OR 2007
Unity Gallery, Private Show, Fort Collins, CO 2002

Private Collection, 6 Installations, Jackson Hole, WY
Public Installation, What Are Records?, Boulder, CO
Private Collection, Gordon, 33 Installations, Boulder, CO
Private Collection, Hiesel, 15 Installations, Boulder, CO
Private Collection, Reynolds; 2 Installations, Taos, NM

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A note about naming.

For me naming a piece is integral to the artwork. The name is for me, and the viewer is free to percieve whatever they like in the artwork. That said, I will take this space to share a bit of my process.

The day that I finish a piece is the day that I name it. I reflect on all that has gone on during the process that I have been sculpting a piece. By doing so, I get to know what the piece is helping me to understand.

Take the “Angels of Forgetting” for example. While I was working on these pieces, I was given a book by a friend. It was not something I would have chosen to read, yet I found myself reading it. Her book was about the things she experienced as a girl growing up in Poland during world war II. Oddly, her recollections were not centered on loss and tragedy. She remembers playing with her friends and a large amount of freedom because the adults seemed to be very distracted most of the time. Later when she became a psychiatrist and emigrated to the US, she felt the need to listen to those who had been to war and she treated many Vietnam vets. The irony is that most vets only wanted to forget what they had seen.

While working on "Angels," I also listened to archived footage of Studs Terkel interviewing people twenty-five years after the great depression. Those who were children during the depression often recalled how everything turned into a game. They enjoyed families gathering together in communal living situations. In many cases they remembered the tragedy with fondness. Those who were adults at the time recalled hardship, stress and loss.

I finished the pieces on Memorial Day, so I considered this as a final significant point in naming them. Throughout the process, I had been thinking about how people deal with tragedy. As children, we have the innate ability to live in the midst of tragedy and still remain in our bliss. As adults, and we suffer greatly, and often more so mentally by worrying. Odly, we are generally the creators of the tragedy itself. Not only that, afterwards, we like to memorialize the tragedy that we created and suffered through with special days and monuments.

At least this is how it all came to be in my mind while I was working on “Angles.”
So on Memorial Day, I am looking at the pieces and feeling what all transpired while working on them and in them I saw two doorways. One doorway, on the darker piece, was horizontal. It seemed to be a doorway accessed by the subconscious, as when sleeping. The other was a regular doorway, and it was on the lighter piece, the one accessed in the light of day.

Being Memorial Day, I was suddenly curious as to why we like to memorialize tragedy. Instead of “lest we forget,” which is supposed to imply that we will learn from our mistakes, perhaps it has the opposite effect. By memorializing our unsavory characteristics and then labeling them as bravery and chivalry, we have grown them, enhanced them. In the entirety of human history, we have been doing the same things over and over. In fact we have gotten better at it. Our wars can now take out millions of people rather than dozens or hundreds.

Then it struck me: What if, instead of creating monuments to our tragedies, we created intentional doorways past tragic perspectives to those of joy. Not escapism at all, but focusing on natural attributes and enhancing positive traits. Perhaps it is time to try a new tactic. By passing through the doorways, with the grace of the same Angles that as children helped us to see only the good, we learn to increase our bliss. By allowing ourselves to invite in joy, generosity and kindness we also cause ourselves to forget why we need war and hatred.

All of this is wrapped up in a feeling encapsulated in the Angels of Forgetting.

When I told my friend who had written the book about the name of pieces, she misheard and thought I had called them Angeles of Forgiving. Yes, they are that too, but that is also the next step.