Wall Piece 9" x 13" 1997
I just got an email from Elise Winters saying that my work, along with that of other polymer clay artists, has been officially accepted as part of the permanent collection of the Racine Art Museum in Racine WI. Please check out the 9/25 post on www.polymerartarchive.com
I wrote the following to Elise Winters who has spearheaded and nursed the project over the last few years and Rachel Carren who wrote the text for “Curatorial Impressions”.
I can’t tell you how much the profile of my work in Curatorial Impressions means to me. Because polymer clay is now a closed chapter in my life your presentation of and writing about my work is an especially valued gift. Your excellent, insightful descriptions of my work have given shape to my journey as an artist and challenges me to consider how my present work relates to those years spent working with polymer. I can’t thank you enough for a gift which helps me understand myself in my art. The service you have performed for the medium is obvious, but on a more subtle level you have given us artists the specific validation of a trained eye and pen which I know will go a long way in supporting my future work.
Pigeonnier near Figeac
Last week I joined Barbara Roth’s watercolor class here at La Cascade which inspired me to try my hand at representational drawing. I’ve always wanted to learn how to illustrate a travel journal. It gives a new meaning to travel, and I don’t have to go far. Pigeonniers, or pigeon houses were said to have been one of the major triggers for the French Revolution. The aristocracy and rich farmers enjoyed the benefits of having pigeons for sport and for the table. The problem was that the pigeons ate the peasant’s grain. Pigeons were very well housed and the pigioniers that weren’t destroyed in the Revolution are monuments to the wealth and imagination of the well to do.
Here are a few of the pieces I’m bringing to show in France. As I worked to build a body of work for this show, I became aware that I was not in charge of the direction it was taking. Although it’s been a relatively short time, I feel my work and I have traveled some distance together. Much of the moody darkness of the earlier pieces has given way to work that is lighter and less substantial.
hub
is about reviewing the circular nature of my life. I have ridden the years as they circle around a hidden axis, counting, remembering, and holding on for dear life.
departure
For me,
“Departure” is about an impossible faith faced with the imposed limitation of gravity. Yet, the yearning to transcend is so strong that one is prepared to take off in the shakiest of contraptions.
intersections
brings to mind a life woven from thousands of intersecting events. The bird and the dervish intersect in an unfortunate encounter which brings the bird to ground rather than the dervish aloft. Again, the yearning to get off the ground can lead to some tricky situations.
