Statement

My work is a meditation on nature and an exploration of the themes of wilderness, the wild and the tamed, freedom and constraints, and the experience of the West. I am influenced by the techniques and themes of 20th Century landscape art painters, Japanese woodblock printing, woodcarving techniques, ceramic tilework, tradition and contemporary country and rock music, and folk arts and crafts. I am interested in the intersection of rural life and the lived experiences of real people in the West versus the depictions of the Western narrative in popular culture and the collective Western imagination. In my work, I reflect on the juxtaposition of the Old West and the New West, rural and urban, the rural-urban fringe, and how changes in society and technology are transforming western culture and the story of the West.

I explore these subjects through sculptures of animals and artifacts of the West, such as cowboy boots and cowboy hats, owls, birds, snakes and other animals, and ceramic tilework.