ABOUT

My college days were short with two years of mixed art classes before I landed a job at a nursery, which changed my life trajectory. I bought land and opened a nursery while raising my two children. The nursery became very successful, the entire family was employed there, and it ran full steam for twenty five years.

 

A need to slow things down after years of hard work landed me in private gardens and I worked as an estate gardener for another fifteen years. The art bug was always there but it took forty years of horticultural emergence before my art materialized in this delightful 3D form.

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My work is often described as 3D collage, others call it Assemblage or Mixed Media, all alluding to the fact that it is made of many objects. My studio space is rack after rack of stuff, organized by what items are made of; wood, metal, resin, porcelain, etc... One rack has a shelf of prized possessions, better stuff that either came at a big expense or was gifted and is very special. To visitors, the contents look chaotic; thrift store superheros next to a collection of antique wood finials - but to me it's heads, facial expressions, good hands, and ornate toppers. Those prized possessions must be used sparingly, almost all are irreplaceable, the ornate of the ornate.

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To create requires a period of experimentation, placing one item with another and waiting for some magic to begin. The layering of objects is like building a creative heap, shapes have to feel right, main characters take center stage, weak junctures have to be resolved. An Apoxie clay is used (almost always) to unite and join, as are glues, screws, magnets, and wire bits. After many days and a hardening of the clay (12 to 24 hours per layer), a unified object begins to take shape. The last phase and usually the longer one than the initial build, is the paint. There is a love/hate relationship with this stage, I've learned to expect a bit of wishy-washy before my efforts begin to gel. 

 

My hope is that they make you smile or outright laugh. These are the results of a crazy collection of stuff!