STATEMENT OF WORK

As I write this, the toxic nature of social media as it filters politics down to us has become depressingly clear. Varlet is a nearly subconscious representation of Trump and the political effect that he has wrought. The orange "hair" on the head of a snake is a none too subtle identifier. The flower in place of a venomous reptile's rattles makes it lovingly acceptable, however, the spike within hints at an inherrent danger. The carved/painted cherry pillow provides easy crawling- or reference to a ridiculous salesman- take your pick.

Bad Guy was initially intended to refer to Putin, who reflexively points his finger at the West for every evil imaginable. His own motives are, of course completely flawless. The mutated scowl in the center begs to differ and offers in Cyrillic text, a critical, "Insufferable Righteousness" above it. Shortly after I began the piece I realized that this gesture could also be applied to certain political vectors right here at home. (Some of these are obvious- other, maybe not.)

Major changes happed in my work as COVID erupted and I found myself more isolated among thoughts that became increasingly pointed. For example, Rather Actual addresses the increasing influence and control of technology in all aspects of our life. (And this was even before AI becam daily front page news.) I is not a little ironic that the use of technology allowed the text to be more or less perfectly rendered- almost as an insignia, on the basal form.

Years ago, two large tulip poplar trees were destroyed to build apartments near my campus office. Somehow I convinced the dozer operator to move the remains to a location where I could reduce massive chunks to sized I could move and machine myself. This stash has become a great source of material for making the basal forms in my recent work.

Much of my practice involves collecting and preparing wood from local trees. When I began to use wood as a primary material, it came from friends who had cut trees and offered me the wood. Now I have over 100 trees, many of which I planted, moved or started from seed. Several recent works were made with wood saved after pruning two pear trees 10 years ago. I’d like to think that my work functions like poetry, except it uses forms-and sometimes words, to evoke thoughts and feelings that lie deep and barely realized.