Artist Statement
My work is inspired by a fascination with nature and the way it interacts with itself as well as with the man made world manipulating it. I make connections between the ways nature grows and adapts to its environment and my own interactions and reactions to my surrounding environment. How feelings of being overwhelmed, inspired, awed, fearful and alone relate to phenomenon occurring in nature such as how a tree can cling to the side of a cliff by only a couple strong roots tethering it to solid ground or how a seed accidently dropped inside an abandoned building can sprout and grow despite the dark interior. Similarly, how a landscape can be so overwhelmed by a spring flood that it leaves a forest half drowned with trees trapped on a newly formed system of islands or how a whole town can be flooded and covered as if it were never there. An entire civilization could be hiding under the surface of a murky lake with no one ever knowing unless they take the time to question the calm surface and explore what lies underneath.
I use a combination of personal photos and collected images to create landscapes to explore my personal emotions and experiences in life. I use primarily clay, sometimes accented with resin, copper or wood, to create landscapes that are a jumble of familiar places wrapped together and re-formed into something both familiar and strange yet somehow comforting. Using clay allows me to work with a material that is easy to form, manipulate and change but that also begins to form itself, creating organic mountain ranges and voluminous tree tops. |