artist's statement

I source the immaterial through the material. My practice includes drawing, sculpture, assemblage, and artist’s books. I work with mirrored glass, tar paper, cyanotype, and drawings made with an electrode on a copper table. These arcane materials, with their sometimes unpredictable outcome, allow for accident and serendipity as well as ongoing refinement of technique. Chemistry is the emotion of matter.
 

the book of knowledge

The grandiose title of this book came from my old copy of the children’s encyclopedia, The Book of Knowledge, which I used to weight the pages with as I was gluing the binding.

An artist’s work is a consistent search for knowledge – either personal or external – about a specific subject or in consideration of the arc of life. No promises here: the “knowledge” conveyed contains no words or facts, only a progression of visceral visual experience. The unspoken and the mysterious also count as knowledge. The book enacts its search and gathering.

Tar paper is a peculiar, ordinary, flexible, smelly and evocative medium. It takes all media, it’s durable, and it has its own intrinsic metaphors. Tar is a primeval petroleum product, which has literally come to the surface recently in our minds.

I grew up making frequent visits to the ooze of the La Brea Tar Pits in my native Los Angeles, where animal remains are still excavated. For me, this underground source of fossils, fuel and prehistory is analogous to the upwelling of images from a mysterious source.

hypnagogue/hypnopomp

Visual and auditory hallucinations that occur during the period between sleeping and waking are known as the "hypnagogic state"; those that occur in the state between waking and sleeping are the "hypnopompic state".

hypnagogue

Mirrored, wall-mounted drawings that cast a reflection upward and a shadow downward. The drawing itself is not immediately visible.

hypnopomp
Drawings made on asphalt roofing paper (tar paper) with metallic pigments. The smell of tar evokes for me the primeval ooze of the La Brea Tar Pits in my native Los Angeles, where animal remains are still excavated. This underground source of fossils, fuel and prehistory is analogous to the upwelling of images from the unconscious mind.

it takes one to know one
An ongoing series of drawings on glass, made with coated silver. I developed this process in collaboration with a commercial window manufacturer.

When we walk by a store window or a mirror, we catch glimpses of ourselves that are unexpected, uncomfortable, flattering, horrifying. We become self-conscious. In these drawings, the viewer’s reflection is elusive because comparatively little of the glass surface is mirrored. So, there is that moment when viewers see their own reflection, do a mental double-take, and then go through the process of relating to their own image.

The images in which viewers see themselves are also self-conscious: of body and mind, action and reaction, attraction and repulsion.

Panes of glass lean against the wall in groups, or rest on ledges mounted at different heights. Viewers perceive them as either blank glass, as grey and black drawings, or as mirrors, depending on the angle of view.

In my public work building water features, I have used the water’s reflection to mirror and complete artwork. Here, the viewer becomes part of the imagery, psychologically and physically.
 

chemistry is the emotion of matter

Ambiguous, perhaps ominous organisms float and hover on the page in transition, mutation, and transformation – portrayed in the sentient rigors of corrosion, decay, and metamorphosis. The viewer’s visceral response defines these beings as much as any intention of the artist.

These drawings are made with an electrically-charged stylus on a copper table. The burnt holes in paper combine to make line and volume; flame from a torch or material burned directly on the drawings adds color and shading. The drawing technique adds to the tension between beauty and pollution, delicacy and destruction.

installations

In the last ten years, I have worked with the emotional and psychological import of symbols, stories and uncommon materials, often using the metaphor of water, both as medium and subject. I use moving water in installations as well as the subject of drawings, prints and sculpture and as a metaphor for mutability, reflectivity, and unpredictability.

Painting on clear acetate with clear and white media results in a drawing projected on a wall without being able to tell what it is that throws the shadow. The installations FLOOD and VOLUME ONE (with Nola Avienne) use this method; imagery draws from disturbing forms of microscopic and aquatic life.

public work

After receiving a fellowship to study water features in ancient Rome, and their relationship to urban design and public art in Seattle, I designed and built three public water features in Washington State and California.

A design team project in conjunction with the Seattle Fire Department tells the story of a village saved by fire from destruction by water. An installation in a public park near the children's wading pool is activated by water: images appear when concrete is wet and disappear when it dries. In Carlsbad, California, a water feature in the courtyard of the regional library uses half-letters to spell out words that are completed by the water's reflection: a literal use of the metaphor of "reflecting" on what is read.

A school that specializes in graduate studies in psychology, Antioch University Seattle commissioned Hemisphere and Basin. It was designed to lend focus and serenity to the communal entry space.

In Lieu Exhibit Space

In Lieu Exhibit Space presents work by a group of artists who look for a greater outreach and presence in the local, national, and international art community beyond what each artist's gallery or exhibiting venue can provide. In Lieu curates, promotes and disseminates. See exhibition schedule on this site for upcoming events, and visit www.inlieu.org.