My earlier work was mostly with metals, both fine and ferrous. I was trained as a metal smith using
primarily silver and copper to make sculpture and jewelry. This background taught me to look closely at details, because in small-scale work little details make an enormous difference. Training as a blacksmith increased my appreciation for three-dimensional work on a larger scale, but was somewhat limiting in material. I decided to broaden my training and turned to sculpture as a focus.

During my education, I was frequently assigned to look at nature for inspiration. In working with silver,
I experimented with replicating a variety of natural patterns and textures. I etched water patterns into the surface of a silver pendant, and made butterfly wings out of copper and enamel. Living in Southern Illinois provided a great deal of natural beauty to inspire me. I had never seen a ginkgo leaf until I moved there, when I was 29 years old. Something about the texture and the shape of this leaf fascinates me, and I have attempted to capture its grace several times through my work. I started in iron forging round bars into a ginkgo fan shape with tapered stems. In the spring of 2001 I tried again, this time using wood. Taking clear white aspen, I reproduced the shape of the leaf in a 2 ft. fan, with an exaggerated, 18 ft. long, bent wood stem. This still seemed a poor reflection of the beauty I see in the gingko leaf. Although these natural inspirations made my work much richer in texture and content, I still felt they failed to capture my intense feelings for the source.

The impetus for my current work began when I looked closely at a single dandelion seed. The bulky
shape of the seed at the bottom contrasts with the fragile stem, which holds it to the delicate umbrella at the top. It is beautiful--and it can fly. Andrew Goldsworthy's groundbreaking work with plant material, rocks, and ice has inspired me. He writes, "All forms are found in nature, and there are many qualities within any material." His example also showed me that it is acceptable to stop trying to make copies of natural forms, and use the forms themselves. I want to show an audience the curves in a stalk of grass. I want them to look at the color and texture of a single leaf, rather than at the entire tree.

In facing the problem of what to do with the materials chosen, I constantly struggle with the temptation
to create new forms with these organic materials. I would rather emphasize their inherent form. Part of the reason that most people don't notice the beauty of a dandelion seed is because it's clumped together with dozens just like it to create the familiar globe of the dandelion seed flower. An example of this struggle is a piece I made with the long, thin thorns of a female Honey Locust tree. I was tempted to join the thorns into a volumetric sculpture such as an egg or a sphere. However, this simply would have created a thorny egg, and would not emphasize the graceful taper of the thorns, nor the way they reflect the shape of the tree they're from. Taking an 18"x32"x1/4" piece of wood, I drilled holes to create a 3x7 grid that I filled with the thorns. As the thorns intersect the wood at a 90degree angle, they look like a tiny forest planted by mathematicians. In mounting the board on a wall, I have put the thorns closer to their natural position on the trunk of the tree, but in a different pattern. This contrast to the random patterns usually found in nature creates a striking image. By simplifying the arrangement of elements in my sculptures, I hope to allow the audience to more fully appreciate their individual forms.

I also find inspiration in the minute connections I observe in flora and fauna. What holds the tiny point
of a dandelion seed to the head of the flower until just the time it's ready to be released? Is there a little of the flower head that is taken away with the seed, or visa versa? Or is it a mutual letting go? The same could be asked of hair and feathers. Is there a bit of flesh left on the hairs we scatter around every day? I use these observations to help me decide how to connect the materials to their support. In thinking about these junctions, I am also aware of the fragility of the plant matter in contrast to their longevity. When left in their natural environment, leaves and flowers are gone by the next season, recycled to create new life. However, there are pictures created by the Victorians in the 1800's using flowers that still survive today. If I am not careful with brittle fall leaves, they crack and crumble. Yet I have leaves from a decade ago in a scrapbook, which is coming apart at the binding. In this context, I am experimenting with the durability of supporting materials, such as paper and glue, compared to the longevity of the found natural materials. I have taken a 22"x30" sheet of heavy bond paper and glued the stem of the leaves perpendicular to the surface on a 4" grid so that they jut out like shelves. I am particularly interested in what time will do to this piece. If the glue degenerates first, will a false fall be created in the gallery by the leaves falling from the paper? I hope to develop a different kind of longevity for these forms by creating lasting images in the mind of the audience.

I am a very non-linear thinker. My most recent sculptures often feel more like experiments than art.
Each new material creates more experiments with issues such as light, negative space, texture, color, shadow and rhythm. Not only do the leaves and grasses become more important as individual objects, but also the way they interact with space and light create additional interest. One of the pieces recently worked out involves curly grasses mounted on a wall. I took strips of 1"x2" aspen and attached them to a wall horizontally in 2 rows. By leaving 1/16th of an inch between the rows, I am able to push the stems of the grass in this gap where they are held by the wood. The shadows are almost more fascinating than the beautiful curves and spirals I was originally intending to show.

One of the elements I find most satisfying in my current batch of experiments
is the decisions I must make about the final sculptures. What will I do with a beautiful leaf or seed? I try to let the problems solve themselves with as little influence on my part as possible. An example is a sculpture tentatively titled 'February 15th'. I wanted to work with milkweed seeds-those small white puffs that float throughout the Midwest-but was having problems finding them. Although I'd been told that the pods are mature only in the fall, I found a fence full of milkweed pods and seeds on February the 15th. To honor this gift, I decided to make the grid for this sculpture 2 columns of 15. In order to recreate the sense of the seeds floating, I mounted each seed on it's own slender stalk of clear glass. It is this quality of floating that most attracts me to these seeds, but I find their color and delicacy to be equally appealing. As with most elements I find in nature, they seem best presented to the audience in their natural state, with as little intervention by me as possible.