Artist's Statement

 
My current work reflects a consistent conceptual origin and a focused concern for the material, gesture, form and balance. All of the materials I use have a previous history.  The surface of the work and material reveals this history.  I think often of the likely state of the world when my children are my age, as compared to when I was their age. These gestural, fragmented and biomorphic abstractions poignantly reflect both beauty and a sense of inevitable loss. 
 
My work in wood is carved, hollowed and assembled from sections of trees otherwise destined to be firewood, a variation of the traditional Japanese yosegi zukuri process.  Essentially, it permits large-scale wood sculpture with non-cylindrical forms, reduced weight and a controlled surface, largely free from the concerns associated with regular, seasonal wood movement.
 
Each work is initiated with a chainsaw, jointed with chisel and plane, hollowed out with an assortment of tools, carved with gouges, charred with a torch, scraped and sanded, leafed with metal, and then scraped and drawn on. Tool marks from every stage are visible atop the grain of the wood and are a reference to the material, the history of making, and image. 

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