I am a builder, and for as long as I can remember, I always have been. Whether I am constructing a ceramic vessel, or orchestrating a mixed-media work on paper, each piece has a sense of being made from various parts and materials, or layers of imagery and meaning. My goal is always for the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.

While continuing the practice of making useful pottery is important to me, much of my clay work does not function in a utilitarian sense, as a piece of pottery might. Instead, it functions as art; it exists to communicate an idea. Pieces may imply some mysterious practical use, but often the notion is only symbolic. Machine-like sculptures with hoses, filters, and moving parts reveal themselves to be so overly articulated that they could never have a practical use. Other vessels adopt more figural shapes, becoming metaphors for the human vessel.

The tools and other icons in my drawings are often symbols of myself or of others, and represent my own personal experiences. However, the symbolic connection is seldom immediately clear, and the narratives are not unique to my individual experiences. I hope that you will ask yourself, for example, what a honeybee could have in common with a hammer, and what either might have in common with you. My wish is for you, as an active viewer, to assemble some of the meaning from the various layers of text and imagery, just as I have assembled the physical object from different sources. While there is a definite narrative hinted at in most of my drawings, I hope that each viewer will bring something different to the work, and help me tell a story that becomes unique for every individual.

In the end, some of the “work” in any piece of artwork must always be left up to the viewer. Just as the artist must evaluate himself while working, in order to create the art object, the viewer must participate while evaluating, in order to create the art experience. Art that lends itself to the viewer’s own creative experience is what I work towards.