Artist Statement
My sculptures, mosaics and watercolors weave together impressions of line inferred from a landscape as I actively interpret its natural features, artifacts and man-made structures. Our landscape is dynamic, with human activity and its impact constantly changing the surrounding environment. Movement through space and time is ephemeral, though a brushstroke documents gesture when dipped in medium and applied to a surface. My sculpture work implies movement in the form of a hand painted line.
Although steel is an industrial construction material, it is also natural—capable of maintaining organic and a geometric shapes, and strong linear form. The line itself then becomes an engineered object, a physical manifestation of what would be planned on paper. My wooden sculptures are constructed into geometric forms which reference nature.
In combining different materials, I borrow processes closely associated with fiber arts. A method or routine emerges and aligns with weaving process or overlapped patterns. Following a path as a routine, and creating new or multiple paths, affords an opportunity to collect and assemble new objects and ideas, resembling the act of weaving.
More recently, I have begun multiple studies and series about water. It seems like the perfect, elusive subject because it flows along paths in the form of rivers or streams. Water is forceful at times, yet it also stands still and splashes into droplets. When it moves across the landscape, it appears almost gestural when viewed from above, or when it falls against rocks. Surface waves emerge as patterns, often overlapping as if each stream were separate. My sculptures capture elements of the natural world synthesized with man-made and found objects.