I am an object-maker. Throughout my career, I have used static forms to express my reactions to cultural, political and personal events. I translate these reactions into works made up of simplified forms, often with outsized proportions, so as to transcend time and space and to elicit an emotional and intellectual response in my viewers. I want to engage my viewers and invite them to address issues they might prefer not to see. The dimensions of the pieces coax viewers to become conscious of their physical relationship to the objects, and raise issues of scale, proportion and humanity.

Many of my works over the past twenty years have employed fragmented heroic images that are at once playful, yet isolated and mysterious, complex and contradictory. My sculptures are informed by classical architectural language, and its mannerist and metaphorical uses in history. The use of the architectural facade and the colossus stem from their symbolic reference to the order, values, politics and ambitions of a society. The fragmentation of these monumental symbols reduces them to research specimens. The mute, grand volume and scale of these objects are still strongly felt, but their heroic idealization is weakened. Their rational order also speaks of control and censorship. Their facades are elegant, but their balance is precarious and awkward, revealing the fragility and ambiguity of their grandeur.

Many of my pieces can be read as monuments. The Latin source of the word “monument” means things that remind. My works are reminders that act as spiritual and psychological stops; silence within a chaotic world. They are not the heroic memorials to which we are accustomed. Rather, they are poignant remembrances. They consider the unnamed victims of our times. I encourage the viewer to touch the pieces, to sit on them, to connect with them in a physical way. I want my work to reach out on a visceral as well as a cognitive level. There is meaning that can be articulated, and there is meaning that needs to be experienced.

I have introduced text into some of my recent pieces. I am exploring the ambiguity that resides within a literal frame: words are used to both suggest and confuse meaning. On a broader scale, I am probing the use of language as a tool of ideology. Words are used to obscure the meanings of critical actions. Language is chosen to conflate and confuse, as words are made – in a paraphrase of Humpty Dumpty – to mean exactly what their speakers want them to mean.

Clay is an ideal medium for my sculpture. Since the onset of civilization, it has been used as a building and modeling material. Its earthen source connotes the primal, the elemental. It is easily comprehended as the “stuff of life.” Moreover, ceramics has a visual warmth, weight and strength, and at the same time, a feeling of fragility. These contradictory characteristics add to the tension of the pieces.

I use personal and communal yardsticks in measuring the success of my art. A state of discovery is the best measure of my artistic fulfillment. While there is consistency in the content of much of my work, I experiment with new forms of expression. This probing occurs conceptually and materially. Although clay is my primary medium, I also use other materials -- often in ways that later enrich my ceramic work. I question the traditional boundaries of my medium, both technically and historically. I consult frequently with a small group of peers with whom I have discussed my work over many years. They constitute a valuable community that offers constructive critique. I am most gratified when personal intention and public interpretation mesh harmoniously, for I am not interested in a didactic monologue. I accept that meaning can be fluid, but I hope to create the shape of its container.