there's a vision in the moss patch

I place my work in clusters, groups, or collective strands. At times I orient my sculptures to reflect the communication between organisms in a community.

I work with moss, clay, plastic, water, glass and wax. I select specific materials to create vulnerable events.

My current direction is to combine materials and to continue creating multi-unit, site-specific pieces. My work is evolving towards installations that interact directly with the environment. These pieces change with the hour and the season, evolving with the natural world.

I think of cellular intricacies and differentiation.

white stone landscape

red stone portrait

I marvel at the subtleties in variation and the function of multiples. I think of new growth. I am fascinated by metamorphosis and the temporary stages of life and growth.
Often times these pieces are units of life. Some are a condensed mass of material possessing the potential for emergence, decay, transformation.

blue stone portrait

the lava fields sit for thousands of years before even the hint of vegetation can find it hospitable enough for colonizing. i was inspired by the vast cold desert of back rough rock and the gentle slopes of the washed out lowlands. we drove for a day through this landscape and i came to think of the stones as part of a larger event and also as singular entities. it made me think of the complex families and ways of creating portraits as a means of indulging in an individual while following a set of conventions assigned to the larger whole.

the sketch below inspired an experiment which i am calling blue stone portraits.

in my hands i made small hollow cups with pinholes on the top with clay. i painted them blue and sat them in a line. little, big, short, tall, straight, crooked, and in every which way it resembled to me the way we relate within our families and the way in which we are part of a line and also part of a cluster.

clearly inspired by the water and land of iceland, and specifically the lava fields, glacial icebergs of jokulsarlon, and the relentless relationship of everything to water, i put submerged the blue pieces in water.

pigeon poo painting

i am fascinated by gathering, multiples, flocks, grouping, crowds, clusters, families. i look at populations as a study of numbers and masses compiled of individual units, bodies, things. 524 pigeons wait for stale bread on a grey evening in reykjavik. 7 flagpoles in front of the city hall and 6 pigeons propped atop. i have a parallel interest in multiples and in creating order or a system of classifying multiples. this leaves me with an impulse to categorize and index while simultaneously searching for clues of association left by the residue. indexing can be imposed and an index can be an accident. i was looking for the accidents. see the pigeon poo paintings as a stain and an index of pigeons, their position, their direction and their dinner.

maybe i am more interested in what the populations leave as a trace than i am in the populations or maybe the populations and their residues are the sign of temporality and relentless life cycle of things

north coast of ˈaɪslənd

husavik, iceland

husavik is a whaling town a few miles south of the arctic circle in iceland. the glaciers loom in the horizon and a thick layer of clouds hang low most days. the pattern and entropy of the rigs, boats, ropes, buoys, tides, fish and people compel me to look within the evidence and folds of the everyday life here. the light is constant as the sun only sets for a couple hours and even then a glow illuminates shadows and the aurora borealis shimmer in the sky. summer is the wave of energy that seems to be welcome for the dark days of winter inch measurably into the days, even in july.

everything is mandated by the cycles, by spheres and water, so this is what i study.

I sought a subject that enjoys probing in odd crannies and undefined places, looking for clues to convoluted problems or enigmas. The time and focus necessary for such probing is not readily available but I insist on spending the time to do so and the few moments of modest epiphanies, when suddenly something becomes clear, has validated the time spent. The painting below is from Husavik, where the bounteous debris and material seemed to mound and grow in strange places like the back alley of boathouse. My interest s in the distinctiveness, often crisp or hard surfaces, abrupt juxtaposition, asymmetrical balance and attention to things - textures, colors, materials, forms- for their won sake, apart from the mass.

husavik harbor 1

mixed media painting on paper

3" x 6"

july 2010

stonewalls in chilmark

structure is what makes a lasting impression to me, structure as the architecture within a nature that is forever entropic. the stone walls of new england are part tale from the clearing of pasture fields, part evidence of glacial fields, part evidence of humans building, rebuilding and marking the landscape. they create boundaries and lines that simultaneously separate and join, keep in and keep out, remain and crumble. the moss and lichen, the tiny red bugs, the poison ivy that colonizes and flourishes in the salty island air- this is where I am in the early weeks of July finding shady spots and walking the sandy trails to come across walls and to draw as a way of studying and being with the subject of my interest. my interest? barry schwabsky, my advisor, makes me probe deeper into what might casually be names "interests." since my paraphrase will only compromise his point, i quote:

.... remember {about studying my sources} that this does not mean one should try to define oneself or one's sources in advance--it really does mean that you only find them out at the end (if you are lucky). Another way to put it: Even though in a broad sense you know what interests you, you maybe don't exactly know what it is in what interests that interests you. (If that sounds confusing, you're right.) And you still have to work out how that becomes matter for art rather than subject matter to be illustrated.

I wish I could remember who it was who said, "The origin is the goal."