about my work

I like borders and breaking through them, and lines, shapes, and patterns that meet in a mad sort of harmony, objects that are beautiful, with something always somehow out-of-whack.

Drawing is crucial, the ongoing thinking-drawing that I do, fast line drawings with a pen in a small sketchbook. Draw, turn the page, draw, turn the page and so on – letting whatever wants to come out, come out. I look over them later, these drawings, sometimes a lot later, and see ideas or patterns - something in those lines that I’ve made that demands of me further exploration.

I make a large drawing on paper or a hard surface. It becomes clear that the drawing can and should be turned into a sculpture. Or not. More often than not a drawing remains a drawing, meaningful to my process, complete somehow in itself. But if the drawing suggests sculpture I may transfer shapes directly to wood which I then cut, carve, shape and seal as needed, color, and varnish and oil. Can the energy and immediacy of drawing be captured in sculpture despite the many-stepped process involved in creating 3-D work of this kind? That’s what I’m going for – that energy. I also "draw" directly with the wood, moving wood around, combining different varieties of wood in all their varying colors and grain patterns, shaping each piece as needed to develop the form.

I work primarily with scraps discarded by cabinetmakers, salvaged wood, or wood scavenged from odd sources, using precious cast-offs that come my way.

It is a deeply intuitive process, crafted of countless decisions.