Much of my work has to do with the mystery of space - of standing in front of a thing and trying to visualize what it would be like to enter it, go behind it; pass through it with our minds' eye, as though it were a portal, and suddenly be able to enter a realm that isn't limited by time or form.

To me, inner space and outer space are elastic and permeable. I want viewers to encounter my art much as they would a waterfall or a canyon or any natural phenomenon - with curiosity, and wonder. If I'm lucky, such an encounter will inspire them to delve deeper within themselves. And perhaps they will align themselves with whatever mysteries they find within.

 

 Long before I became an artist, I studied geology; for me, the earth isn't simply an obdurate rock floating in space, but a living force, ever in motion. Likewise, I ask myself in my artwork: can a sculpture become something dynamic - can it achieve a fluidity of shape, form, structure? I've spent a lot of time at the ocean shore thinking about how - after thousands, sometimes millions of years - water can transform stone, leaving cavities, crevasses, caves. I greatly compress that passage of time and 'touch' in my work, opening up lattice-like portals and interconnecting, near-intestinal webs where previously was only solid geometry. Artistically, I take on the role of a kind of quiet, unseen, inexorable force. I wonder at the nature of things even as I change them.

In the past, I worked on more resistant materials like marble and wood (using a reciprocating saw with a long, curved blade - as well as routers and sandpaper - overall a somewhat violent, reductive process), but my most recent work has found its home in insulation material - lightweight, durable, accessible in any hardware store. These slabs allow me to work, as I have so long wanted to, quite large (20' high in some cases). Where, in older, harder works I only scooped out hollows in my solids, hinting at mysterious spaces that might exist, within, here I unabashedly show the viewer the wall and space beyond, leaving behind the preciousness of the museum pedestal and encouraging Encounters that are more sensory and physical, like walking into a cathedral of stalagmites. Even higher are my 'Forms' sculptural series, constructed from match-stick like slices of the insulation material that I recycle, some of which can go as high as 60 feet. Their spiny jungle-gym-like geometries may seem more playful than the 'plank' works at first. But, as you espy them from a distance (with your eye) and approach them (with all your body) they still, they evoke the core, visceral, ineffable feelings so important to me: curiosity, mystery, wonder.