Reflections

My recent work, the welded steel and bottle sculpture reflects nature and life in motion. These compositions and designs are inspired by movement within nature, wings in motion, and bodies of water. Motion in the sky are inspirations for, “Bird,” and “Lone Cloud” The compositions rise, fall, and wind like untamed, drifting clouds, and the beat of bird wings. “Bird,” is a bird diving with a blur of blue wings. “Kites,” are butterflies or kite-shaped insects with blurred, colored wings. Other sculpture is inspired by the movement of water: ripples, eddies, splashes, waves and waterfalls. I think of water and its many physical and symbolic qualities: as life giving, cyclic, cleansing, calming, threatening, exciting, joyful, musical…and so on. I am a painter and 2D artist as well as a sculptor and the sculptures often begin as drawings. The final compositions change however, sometimes radically as they begin to materialize. I think of the sculptures as line drawings with the bottles creating shades and tone across the line drawing like washes of transparent watercolors. The difference is that you can walk around the drawing and see it change is so many angles!

I work to vary the stroke of the line drawing with different line widths, using heavy and light steel wire to vary the gesture. By adding steel mesh with a grid, I add more line work with structure and movement. Elmer Bischoff, a Professor I studied with, emphasized the importance of the artist’s mark and making it original and expressive by varying your mark. The bottles work together to create volume and density while flowing across the “line drawing” of the steel armature. Where the white of the paper shows through when painting with watercolors, sunlight and the world behind them can be seen through glass bottles. The bottles are seductive, glass diamonds, while at the same time they are debris; leftovers from mass production, once useful but now destined for the landfill. The sculpture embodies contradictions about what is beautiful and what is art. It brings up questions about our culture, mass production of products, and how we are caring for the environment. The work is a continuation of artwork informed by surrealism, cubism, modernism, pop art, and environmental art. In 1989 I began making sculpture with “ready-mades,” everyday items such as spoons, industrial vents, fans, and flexible electrical conduit. By including such objects, I believe the work has the soul of a past life from its previous use and meaning in culture. I aim to provide layers of meaning within the artwork so that there are many ways to interpret the art. Like a dream, the art can be the subject of varied interpretations. In 1993 I made my first “Earth Tear,” sculpture made of 250 recycled bottles and steel. My recent work is a continuation of this exploration of bottles and steel.