 The challenge I set myself in my work is to make the background conditions of the natural world visible.
Many of the results could be described as sculpture—the three-dimensional assembly or arrangement of objects—but the broader term “projects” better characterizes the full range of my work to also include the individual gestures and one-time events that involve gravity, fire, and ocean tides.
I am geography-bound and my projects are site-specific—directly influenced by the immediate natural and environmental context where I find myself: the woods, fields, and islands of Maine, but also of other places and lands.
I use only what is directly at hand: trees, sticks, stones, earth, and water. While these common and even mundane materials surround us, they are often unseen in their plainness.
Some of my projects are permanent, but many will eventually return to the earth, and some exist only in the moment.
My most direct influences are the simple yet profound works of the artists Carl Andre and Richard Long, where the most ordinary materials or activities are transformed and made elegant by their assembly or by their execution.
When successful, the juxtaposition, organization, surprise, or contradiction demonstrated through my projects serves to enhance the viewer’s awareness of the simple materials or ideas forming the construction, and by extension, the world around us.
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