MY ARTISTIC PHILOSOPHY

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world.
--Joseph Campbell

For me, sculpture is all about MYTH, MEANING and MOVEMENT. Combining the great cross-cultural tales and themes of humanity with the technical skill of the sculptural masters, my work aims to capture the defining moment when timeless storytelling, profound significance, and realistic bodily movement intersect.

MYTHS are the archetypal tales of humanity that continue to resound today, eternal stories of love, sex, birth, and death that present a kernel of universal experience even as cultures change. In our contemporary society, we tend to overlook the essence of what makes us human, and, unsurprisingly, our knowledge of the mythic past is alarmingly low. There is little interest in the lasting--things are temporary, disposable and meaningless; everything comes and goes in a flash. The natural facets of life, the subjects of myth, are taboo; we have forgotten our eternal humanness, so I desire to present new and different visual reimaginings of the myths that remind us of who we are.

Something is always happening in my pieces. My background as a writer and voracious reader of great literature compels me to marry narrative and MEANING with three-dimensional art. My purpose is never just to duplicate the human body or to create only a decorative object: I aim to capture a critical transformative moment that distils the essence of a story, a moment that is eye-catching and arresting, disturbing, memorable, and above all beautiful, as when Eve separates from Adam, when Arachne is changed into a spider, when a mermaid washes up on shore. Too much of art today concentrates on the profane and ugly-what is wrong and meaningless in the world; I want to return art to its original ancient purpose which was to provide meaning, depict the magical, and illuminate the sacred. My work thus makes use of mythic tales to emphasize the meaningful themes of gender equality, sacred intimacy between the sexes, and the guiltless beauty of the human body.

Though my figures are highly accurate from an anatomical standpoint, their bodies' main purpose is to speak their meaning through MOVEMENT. There are many ways of communicating: through words, symbols, colors; for me, body language is the most primal and honest means of communication, the moving nude body even more so. Thus, my figures are never static and never replicate only the artificial pose of a model--their bodies are always the active vehicle for an idea. My sculpted people are doing something that tells their stories. I relish the challenge of intricate double figures because physical interaction expresses bodily communication even more vividly through multiple points of complex and subtle movement. Adam doesn't just stand beside Eve, her muscles push against his, resisting; limbs entwine in a geometry of motion, reflecting human relations.

Contemporary art can be cold, having dispensed with passion and emotion, the true bases for artistic creation. A second component of movement is the emotional content in my sculpture, its ability to elicit a strong response, to inspire new thinking and move to action. After the Storm evokes strong pity in viewers, while women in particular have been drawn to and inspired by the image of feminine strength presented by Iris:: Goddess of the Rainbow. Lilith's Flight compels us to rethink societal perceptions of sexuality and biases about the human body.

Since the earliest civilizations, sculpture has been something magical and dangerous, depicting the gods and monsters that embody all we reverence and fear. For me, sculpting still retains this timeless mythic power. It remains an alchemical process through which a block of clay appears to move, communicates its meaning, and comes to life.

If you wish to support this philosophy and the art that embodies it, consider a secure donation.

About Me

The Sculpting Process