BIO

I was born and raised, through my teenaged years, in New Orleans. It framed my vision of life. It was and continues to be a place of extremes: beauty and decay, religion and ritual, custom and iconoclasm. From that experience, I acquired an excitement for visual matters: colors, forms and even artifacts. Having lived on the border with Mexico for ten years changed my view of contemporary culture and our collective social responsibility.

At the time of the “9/11” bombing of the Twin Towers, NYC, my sojourn as a professor at the University of Texas in Brownsville on the Mexican border altered my aesthetic. Viewing the ambient drug wars, the desperation of immigrants, and the collapsing Mexican democracy due to endemic political corruption and perceiving the curious lack of commitment for dialogue to offer solutions for the growing racial division, wealth inequality, and environmental decline in my own nation, I changed my insular focus of my art to embrace more topical issues.

I taught art in four colleges and universities in various parts of the US for thirty-three years. During that time, I also aggressively pursued the development and exhibition of sculptures designed and produced at those venues.

Artist Statement

I use a narrative of social engagement to generate discussion concerning tree loss and climate decline with my constructions. My process is singular (I work alone) and is laborious (I consider what I make and pursue its design to resolution). In superficial inspection, the current works appears to have a trompe l'œil direction; however, this concern for defining a context is not to fool the eye but to engage interest.

My body of work has changed over years. With a continued use of narrative, I developed specificity employing representational detail in small scaled constructed environments. Initially, the subject matter employed small rooms (inch to one foot scale) defining interior living areas, personal domestic spaces, and realized in ceramics echoing Ming Chi (Chinese Han Dynasty) and other historical traditions for recording experiences. As the imagery evolved, I examined my interest in landscape constructing forms derived from observations outside the home to eventually incorporating issues from the cultural landscape: politics, gender, ethnic equality and ecology.

Current images comment on ecological destruction and view of renewal. They present the value of nature’s provision of trees. The loss of woodlands both in urban and rural spaces is apparent and documented by government agencies and forestry organizations. By maintaining trees, the normal life cycles of these grand organisms consume carbon dioxide, captures carbon, produces oxygen, limits soil erosion and engenders city cooling via the arboreal canopy: one antidote to the climate crisis. I note my awareness of the surrounding phenomena: growing, evolving, decaying, especially in regards to my observations of the nature world, the microcosm of my frequent walks in the woods.

For closure, I make sculptures to define my perceptions, observations, and conclusions; these constructions are fictions of trees, stumps and logs. They are not renderings but reinterpretations of living forms. The imagery is abstracted, altered to achieve an accommodation for installation - placement with other constructed modules which note pared down forest floor waste evolving into nutrients for new growth. Derived from the observation and study of felled trees during frequent walks, I employ found twigs and bark from neighboring parks and gardens attached to a constructed plywood armature. I see how the trees are dismembered; how they are allowed to decompose into the ground; how elements of the vertical structure morph into the horizontal ground surface. Within the sculptures, the placement of the cross-cut sticks forms a veneer. The use of found tree bark carries a relevance of materials as I reconstruct the effigies of living entities from the detritus of the forest floor. I enjoy the physicality of materials. I usually do not alter the natural color of the sticks and bark. My process of construction allows for meditation and intuitive problem solving in attaching the surface composed of found matter. After gluing the bark to the constructed armature, I complete the attachment with an overlay of acrylic matte medium. The placement of the cross-cut sticks forms a veneer. Pattern ritualizes the form allowing modifications which embellishes the original observation from which it emerged-the woods. Swirls and concentric curves are apparent, reminiscent of goddess cultural motifs.

Like skin, tree bark heals with scars. The end grain of logs notes the distortions in the growth rings resulting from injury-a callus. It is similar to the swelling around a cut in human flesh. Fallen branches and twigs are fragments of trees and are ephemeral. In a few sculptures, the shed epidermis (bark) becomes a pre-historic human signature: hand motifs, man’s mark of impact. “Clear Cut” is an installation which evolved over the last few years accumulating similar separate sculptures into one grouping. As companion works, I fabricate smaller sculptures (18 to 30 inches) which are designed for wall mounting or pedestal placement.

Constructing a sculpture alluding to a living tree with these waste pieces (relics) is a form of incantation-a poetic activity. An antidote to contemporary land development which appears to care more for denuding the landscape of trees in favor of barren parking lots and massive concrete and glass structures which are impervious to seed penetration and diminishing tree production. This past year (2022) I was awarded an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Individual Support Grant. My application to the Gottlieb Foundation culminated with the current works employing found woodland waste to reconstruct forest vignettes which allude to the ecological value of trees.