I create wall sculptures constructed from slip-cast and slab-built ceramic elements. The elements take many shapes: circles, squares, triangles, irregular pebbles, rectangles, and girdled circles like cells in mitosis.  They can be as small as a one-inch cube or as large as a 12-inch diameter circle.

 

Working intuitively, my fears, hopes, and preoccupations inhabit the constructions that come to be. During the pandemic, many sculptures held the uncertainty with which we all lived, elements teetering, almost toppling away from one another. Others, such as the pieces in the Guardian series, are stacked solidly, one infinity-like element atop another up to eleven shapes.  Gradient hues, the center element is a complimentary or contrasting color, like a third eye, as the guardian’s job is to support and comfort in difficult times. Standing five and a half feet tall, a warm glow emanates through apertures and around the edges, breathing strength and compassion.

 

Smaller work, such as the sculptures in my Seed series, are constructed from 4-8 parts of circular elements.  Each starts with burnt umber-ivory black, the color of rich soil.  I paint the backing boards bright red.  The red radiates around the seeds’ edges and speaks to the embodied energy within each being.

 

I continue to push my practice and construction in size and composition.  Increasingly, I am drawn to the space created when dissimilar elements rub up against each other.  By painting the backing boards with bright colors, I animate the negative space and intimate the energy that binds matter (or in my case, elements), the basis of all things.

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I was born in Alamogordo and raised in Albuquerque. At the turn of the millennium, I returned to New Mexico after living in upstate New York, San Francisco, and Kenya. I moved back to La Luz, the community where I grew up five years ago. Designed by Antoine Predock and built between 1968-72, La Luz is like a sculpture.  The aesthetic, deeply rooted in Pueblo architecture, has permeated my being: the rectangles, triangles and curves that form the buildings, and the way in which the development steps down the escarpment so as to be inseparable from it.

 

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that I will continue to be deeply influenced by being back here at home, on the mesa, overlooking the bosque, the city, and the mountains.