My work primarily concerns the concept of how we see ourselves in time. I invented two forms of expression to address this conceptual query: Cultural Fossils and Contemporary Relics. Both of these are directly inspired by my observations of nature.
My Cultural Fossils contain impressions of the mass-produced, ready-made images that have flooded our lives. They are assemblages of three-dimensional objects that create tangible dreamlike images of our cultural condition that appear to be archaeological snapshots of the moment in relief. In them we see images as exotic as Indonesian garudas and as common as paper clips. Plastic millipedes, lizards, and snakes, and real sea shells, seed pods, and fern fronds represent some of the more enduring forms of life whose impressions I have woven between religious and pop icons. In my Cultural Fossils the real and unreal are easily confused. Just when you think you see the impression of a real insect, "Made in China" appears on the thorax.
Cultural Fossils report, they don't judge. Religious icons and pop imagery are equally well represented. Faces from Egypt, Rome, and Mad Magazine provide their profile or face us head on. Chinese fire-breathing dragons compete with cheap plastic birdies for the honor of your attention. Coins, corporate logos, and letters lie scattered about. Sometimes my Cultural Fossils are organized, other times they appear to be as randomly laid down as the effluent of a great river. And this is what I intended: to have them look like fluvial deposits from the great river of time.
Contemporary Relics: I deliberately degenerate these works, reducing classical forms to their most identifiable and durable essence. To date I have focused on the most recognizable of all images: the human figure. But I experiment with other forms as well. To show that it is what is inside us that is most important, I intentionally assemble my forms with pieces missing so that the interior surfaces are as visually accessible as the exterior ones. I call my broken, bent and twisted figures "Contemporary Relics" in an effort to point out that everything we make, no matter how new, is a relic from the moment of its creation.
Cultural Fossils comprise the surface of the majority of my Contemporary Relics. The imagery on the surface and the form of the figure itself generate a dialogue that becomes more poignant when it is studied from a variety of perspectives. From a distance you see one thing, but when you get close up, you realize what you see is vastly more complex. Here you find agreement with our present scientific point of view: the universe expands infinitely.
This discovery makes people pause. Time is felt in the pauses. In our contemporary lifestyle we have lost our sense of having time because we fail to pause. - Yet we discover our connection to nature and feel our place in time by pausing to reflect and observe.
