My work is challenging and questions certain preconceived notions of aesthetics. It has been described as “raw and edgy with a certain sensibility, a refined language”.
Using basic art materials, I explore possibilities that transform the nature of the material into new forms. Through the creative process, working in the most direct manner possible, the material takes on a new aspect. My pieces have a “hand made” reality; a reality often monochromatic, in which there are no excesses, no embellishments, and no decoration, reducing the work to its fundamental essence. The artwork reflects the material and the attitude with which it has been made. All aspects of making the piece are revealed in the work and are not refined or hidden. Working with the wall and the floor, my work challenges traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture.
•“Voodoo” Canvas shapes are cut, glued, stuffed and painted in multiple permutations forming an animated collection of forms along the wall. Their kinetic energy and interaction with one another, their surface, texture, and direction, produce a powerful presence moving in and out as they traverse the wall.
•“Zombies” I continue to explore my interest in cutting and manipulating the canvas to transform the material into forms that project off the wall and confront the viewer. Reminiscent of bandaging, the ragged and rough edges, holes and scars, of these pieces produce a feeling of unease. “Zombies”, lifeless and corpse-like, reflect a scary countenance.
•“Rag Heads” Pieces of canvas are cut spontaneously into loose configurations evoking anthropomorphic shapes. Raw and unpainted, they stimulate the viewer to imagine content that reflects mood and expression and their semblance to faces or heads is an outcome of how the material dictates the form.
•“Spheres” Canvas strips are used to create spherical forms that have mass and weight, contrary to the nature of the material itself. The sculpture is realized through the application of abundant layers of canvas and glue. The sculptural forms are solid canvas all the way through, making them very heavy. Unpainted, the process of layering is revealed and the sculpture establishes an absolute muscular presence in the space.
•“Ghosts” Canvas and paint create forms that are draped on the wall. The quiet transformative quality of these pieces is achieved by cutting and manipulating the canvas, revealing hills, valleys, and craters, that establish positive and negative shapes. “Ghosts” reflect a sense of deterioration, an impermanence that is illusive and effected by time.
•”Diamonds & Cones” These pieces, photographed together, are further examples of my work with canvas and metal and are the beginning of my renewed interest in using white. The “white” diamonds, cutout and glued like the black and brown diamonds from earlier work, demonstrate how color affects the nature of a form and can give that form a new reality. The white cones, scattered on the floor, almost like a necklace, make a statement about shape and placement while not depending on a fixed composition, a main theme in my work.
•“Barricade” A simple wooden structure is designed to stand on the floor. These structures, made multiple times and produced in a variety of ways, are used in many permutations and combinations on the floor. In one configuration they form a giant rectangle, resembling a raised rug and in another, they are components in a pile.
•“Pile” The work is comprised of handmade wooden shapes, sticks, cubes, and lines, which are heaped together to form a large pile. The elements, all painted black, reflect a vocabulary of essential types of forms made by basic construction. They are made in a direct unexacting way by sawing and gluing wood by hand. These forms, sometimes scattered on the floor, sometimes assembled into bundles or groups, reflect my interest in random placement and disinterest in permanent composition.
•“Sticks” Small wooden blocks are glued together to form lines that twist and turn. These lines or sticks, are placed together in groups to form bundles that sit on the floor. These lines also function as elements in the “Pile”.
•“Cans” I use aluminum sheet metal to construct cylinders with closed ends. These very basic, lightweight shapes have many different heights and diameters and sit on the floor. They appear more massive than they really are. “Cans,” reflect my interest in making multiple permutations of the same fundamental shape and using them to form sculpture that is not rigidly composed.
•“Cans, Lines, Cubes” Photos show a variety of combinations of many of the forms described above. Scattered around the studio in groups and piles, they demonstrate the possibilities for both random and deliberate composition.
•”Drapes” The canvas is used to create inflated, ballooning forms that are pinned to the wall. They address my interest in transforming a flat, soft material into something that has mass, shape, and dimension. Relating to my earlier work in metal, these pieces assert themselves off the wall into the space through a process of bending and manipulation making the canvas feel like metal.
•“Diamonds” and“Cutouts” My work gravitated away from the fixed, absolute quality of metal to the softer more pliable attributes of canvas. Through a process of cutting holes into canvas shapes, the work evolved into a series of diamonds that were pinned to the wall. The canvas, painted, bent, and stretched took on a unique reality. Sometimes the diamonds were presented in groups moving across the wall as exhibited in the Projects Room at the Painting Center in 2004. Later on, I created large, single diamonds, 8 ft x 8 ft, by gluing smaller diamonds together. These pieces have the feel of tapestry but are irregular and varied, producing a large form that has presence and mystery.
•“Bags & Bends” and “Installation at the Museum of FIT” In these images, you see a series of individual metal sculptures in which I explore the manipulation of aluminum sheet metal. Numerous pieces for wall and floor were part of the large collection that was exhibited at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2001. In his essay for the catalogue of the show, curator Richard Pitts writes “These works are bent, unbent, crushed, rolled, crinkled, torn folded and unfolded in a kind of biblical wrestling match with the creative process.” Rejecting traditional notions of craft, these works have a raw, industrial quality and, while aggressive and confrontational, are also sensitive and eloquent.