Featured

Climate Changer

• August 2018

The first reaction often is to laugh at the idea of bottles being bent by the force of the breeze from the fan.  But I want to evoke a caricature.  An idea that seems like an advertising campaign dreamed up by Madison Avenue with a catchy slogan for a soda company.  The humor masks a sinister irony. The bottles are almost figurative and bent over as they toil in the heat and perspire in the humid air.  The machine represents industrialization and presents a vain attempt at applying a fix to the problems industrialization has created.  Beneath the humorous visual, a machine blows air across sweating bottles of soda in an absurd and futile attempt to fix the problem that it addresses.

Seaform

• August 2016

Re-formed glass bottles become organic objects that dance in unison, pushed by a current of water or wind and emanating form a cross section of a base substrate with a nondescript surface whose underlying beauty is revealed by its cut and polished sides. The piece reflects my interest in the environment and nature.

Found glass bottles, tiger maple wood, and copper wire. Bottles go through a flameworking technique and crackle process to reshape and texture them. The wood includes hand carving and standard wood working processes and a transparent dye finish. 

Inverse Effect

• August 2015

'Inverse Effect' is a mixed media sculpture using kilnworked and flameworked glass, woodworking, and metal casting techniques, combined with constructed and found objects.

Here, a seesaw is integrated with bottles on each end contorted to represent an emotional gesture. The high end of the seesaw represents privilege, including the middle and upper classes, with the gestures standing tall and above the median. In a sub-theme, they are the popular brands. The low end represents despair, with gestures hunching over and falling off.

The title, 'Inverse Effect', refers to the weight the destitute carry as a burden on their lives compared to other social classes. There are fewer on the low end of the seesaw, but they still remain on the bottom. This affects their choices for health, education, economics and lifestyle in general.

The sculpture is kinetic; the high end may be gently lowered to try to reverse the effect, but on release it will go back to its original position with the destitute on the bottom. Are they chained to a futile trap of despair?

Untitled

• February 2015

Ice Tongs with suspended penny jar. 

Tweet don't Chirp

• June 2014

Malleable Series

Twitter is popular for its ability to freely communicate information and ideas. In 2012 it adopted a policy allowing censorship of tweets based on country, to allow the network to grow. The songbird inside the jar represents the spirit of freedom of speech on Twitter, its wings broken by its keeper. Beneath, a newspaper headline reads 'Twitter Breaks Wings off Songbird'. The mallet hitting the jar conveys Twitter taking a strike at freedom of speech and those who would use it. Tiles around the outside of the glass cage read: 'TWEET TWITTER CHIRP', but the word chirp has been censored. The newspaper article also displays this lyric from a pop song of the 70's by Blanchard & Morgan: 'Take away their chirp and the birds will have to whisper when they sing'.

Rebel

• May 2014

Conformity Series

The words in the glass jar label it as 'Wide Mouth'. Letter tiles from a parlor game gathered inside the mason jar, reveal the word 'Rebel'. The defiant vessel is pressured by an old wooden clamp to conform to its forces. It convulses from the strain. Society and social groups apply pressure to conform to their ideals. The vessel is changed, but maintains its memory.

Penny Jar

• March 2014

Malleable Series 

The ubiquitous penny jar. Object of dreams and desires. Small bits of wealth, too unimportant individually, are stored away for the future. Like knowledge and experience, small bits seem unimportant by themselves. But when combined with others, become a proper and crucial wealth of experiences. A sculpture of flame worked and kiln formed glass and mixed media.  I want to smash it.

Conduit

• January 2014

An experiment or sketch relating to flow. The rough and rugged iron ring is a found object from a hike somewhere, saved to be re-purpose in an art piece. The bottles I was working on looked as if they were in motion, so the design reflects liquids flowing through a tube.