This work emerged out of my experiences with nature as a simultaneous force of beauty and destruction. My whole life I have spent countless hours walking in the woods, along seashores and river beds, looking intimately at fallen objects, growing and dying organisms. I started becoming interested in what goes on inside these organic objects and all the cells and repeated patterns in their make up. Then I started thinking about what humans are made up of and the things that go on inside of us. Everything is changing, evolving, growing and decomposing in every minute.

In this work, I want the viewer to notice things they might normally disregard or overlook. To be reminded of the invisible world that goes on beneath our noses and outside our awareness.

I don’t feel that I really understand the mechanisms of nature. Even if I can understand them a little bit, I feel they are on their own timetable, they have their own mission, They are drive by their own map. On the other hand I know that I effect everything that I touch and everything that I touch effects me in turn. Everything is connected in that nothing exists on its own. 

 

PROCESS

When I sit down in the studio to create this work, I don’t have a grand plan of how it is going to turn out. I allow my response to visual stimuli to navigate me through the creation of multiple elements that will eventually go into the installation. I tend to be keenly in tune with my surroundings, which can be both a benefit and a curse. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the visual stimulation of the world. This is what drives my desire to slow down and work methodically and meditatively building one small element on top of another. I set before me a task that is seemingly impossible to complete because I collect, cut, paste and draw everything by hand. A very time consuming, arduous process forces me to spread the task out over time. By looking at smaller details, I am able to concentrate on something I can wrap my mind around.

The making of the elements is a very controlled process. I am reflecting on the fact that I have no control over nature. The only things I can control are my detailed drawings and cutout paper. While the task of making the objects takes years to complete, the installation itself is a fluid, intuitive, process that is conceived on the spot and completed in one week.  As I approach the gallery there is no preconception of what the work will do. The landscape seems to grow of its own volition. It represents what goes on in nature both inside and outside our bodies. It is a representation of continuity and that everything is fluid.

MATERIALS

I use a lot of recycled materials. Phone books, wax, toilet paper rolls, old drawings, found paper, dirt. The reason for this is not that I am making a political statement on conservation. My consideration of this issue is a personal choice. It is important to me that I do not leave a heavy footprint on the earth with my art. That my art adds awareness without adding clutter. It is important that I use materials that have a long process behind them. Like the toilet paper rolls.  That whole process is intriguing to me, how someone had to cut the tree to make the paper, then wrap the toilet paper around the roll, which then goes to the consumer who uses the toilet paper then saves the roll so I can then scrape the excess toilet paper off the roll, cut it into pieces and install it in the gallery. There are two different levels. There is the actual object and where it came from and then there is the transformation of the object into something new. 

IDEAS AT PLAY IN THE WORK

 I feel that this work underscores the opposing forces of  nature. magnetism vs. repulsion. contraction vs expansion, growth vs decay, beauty vs. ugliness.  It is a combination of these polarities that I see in nature. I see all of this happening within our bodies and outside our bodies.

INTENTION

I believe if the work is successful it should compel the viewer to recognize themselves on a more cellular level, like a recognition of who we are inside. Sort of like looking in a mirror, but your not looking at a face you are looking at a microscopic version of yourself.

I would like the audience to feel free to come into the space and be enveloped by it and allow themselves to respond to it, not to feel that they have to stay far away and step back from it. I want them to feel they can get close to the materials. To smell it, to look at it from different angles, to lay on the floor and look up at it. It is important that the viewer interacts with the piece.

This is not a static piece of artwork. It is a piece that continues to grow in my studio. And actually it changes as it goes from gallery to gallery and it is evolving and developing as it goes from one place to the next.  I don’t ever see these as finished works of art. I see them as works in progress.