ARTIST STATEMENT

It is unlikely a sculpture will change any minds alone.  It may not directly influence political, social or cultural changes.  However, the work can have a transformative effect on the viewer.  This is what sculpture has always been doing within its province: to offer a unique insight, vision, or perspective, which can then heighten one’s own consciousness.  It may then keep alive those issues that must not be allowed to fall into our individual or collective silence.

I have spent a great part of my life as a sculptor practicing in public and private settings. After working in Italy, and later leaving my teaching post in Minneapolis/St. Paul, I moved to the Northwest where I presently live.  I am working in granite, basalt, and marble in my studio, preparing marble stones for an upcoming sculpture exhibition.  This studio work allows the visitor and viewer to see sculptures in process.

The proposed drawings for stone sculptures in the studio draw a connection between contemporary work found in international sculpture gardens in Europe and the world of prehistory.  Thousands of years before our time, in the megalithic period, there were ‘big rocks’ or ‘megaliths’ and later human beings constructed piles of rocks called ‘monuments.’  Some 6000 B.C., ‘Petra glyphs’ or rock carvings were found on both sides of the stones, visualizing our pre-history, on both continents.  These early stones or carvings are not dissimilar from contemporary maps of today.  Many of these carved stones or ‘Petra glyphs’ included sailing vessels and other contemporary symbols, such as the volume or the pallet.  I find these early creative efforts fascinating.

I have included some of my earlier public commission photos on my web site; Rokker V at the University of Minnesota celebrates the point of “knowing and not knowing” as a sculptural metaphor for a learning community.  Ballyviktor celebrates the founding of a Dutch American College by embracing, in part, the chimneys, tiles, and floors of famous Dutch painters.  Starr Wyndere becomes the focus of a community with a vision of becoming a city of importance through the commissioning of a public sculpture, which was placed in front of their City Hall, and becoming the city symbol.  These pieces, commissioned by very different communities, point to the possibilities of stone sculpture, along with steel and glass, becoming contemporary materials for metaphors in the Pacific Northwest, where I live and work.  I look forward to having conversations with you in my studio regarding this new work.