The Dance At The Bench

In this conversation with found materials…a new story reveals itself  with each piece I work on.  First there is a great hunt…a harvesting of materials, fragments, discards, oddments from the multitude of junking excursions I have been on.

I have no preconceived plan on how to begin and certainly no notion of where each piece will take me. No maps, no written directions just a sense of play and a lamp over my bench to help light my way.

Biography

After many colorful years hitched to a drawing board illustrating for a myriad of clients across the USA and Europe, life changed, as it so often does. I found myself carving out a new and much more interesting artist’s path. Strangely enough, it began right at my feet…finding a beautiful rusty bolt on a busy city street. A fabulous little find…a gem of sorts, the best kind, a catalyst for change.

A latch key kid, I spent summers exploring my neighborhood whirling around on a banana seat bike, collecting rocks and other ephemera that I used to make my very first sculptures. From that point on I was destined for art school to study traditional ways of drawing and painting.  After working as a successful illustrator for many years, I began organically exploring various media including clay, stone work installations, mixed media kinetic sculptures, and wearable fine art jewelry. The area of fine art jewelry has led me on an interesting path that allows me to explore unusual materials and stretch my technical skills in continually surprising ways. The intuitive process of marrying materials from different centuries captivates me endlessly, by allowing me to create small compartments and spaces to house newly imagined stories.

I have always been fascinated by ancient cultures and early mark making, ancient cave dwellers, African, Aboriginal and ancient Native American petroglyphs. From these studies, I have created a distilled free line drawing style that has transcended through major media explorations.   

Combining a love of found materials and this freestyle-glyphic drawing, onto copper and bronze sheets, I then use some of the finished metal panels to fashion kinetic stabiles that spin, wobble and suspend on the teeniest point.  These sculptures engage and entertain by drawing the viewer into the magic and mystery of balance and shape with a marriage of materials old and new. 

It seems a bit ironic that an object such as a rusty bolt that is meant to keep something in one place could propel me towards a different way of seeing, making work, and paved a new beginning for the gem of a rusty old bolt that I found right at my feet.

I spend my free time with family, friends, and volunteering. I also love to walk Frankie, the family’s little Doxie while we hunt for found treasures.

CV

Education

Minneapolis College Of Art And Design,  BFA1981

Studied Under:

Keith LoBue:  Valley Ridge Art Studio

Lynn Merchant:  Solana Beach, CA

Judy Wilkenfeld: Valley Ridge Art Studio

Richard Sally: Hacienda Mosaico, Puerta Vallarta, Mexico

Exhibitions

2014 Tychman Gallery :Commission for permanent sculpture:  Echoes Of A Life

2014 Hemingway Gallery: SNAG 

2014 Collaborate: Friends In The Making

2013Private POP Up Show

2010 5@5 Show

2008 MCBA Installation, Situations/ Hand To Hand    

2007 Tychman Gallery , Sifting 

Bibliography

Schweder, Brenda: “Collaborate:  Friends In The Making” 2014

Munson, Marty: “A License To Create”, The Artist’s Magazine, 

vol. 13, October 1996 p. 66-79

The Walt Disney Movie: The Adventures Of Huck Finn, Title Illustrations 

Commissions/ Collections

2014 Tychman Gallery: Permanent Collection

2003 Columbus Georgia Art Museum

Private Collection, New York City

Private Collection, San Francisco, CA

Private Collection, Nashville, TN

Private Collection, Lincoln, NE

Private Collection, Minneapolis, MN

Rimon: Arts Board, 3 year term 2007-2010

Speaker: At UW Stout2003

Artist Statement

With a passion for mark making onto sheets of metal that leave the surface wildly textured, mingled with found objects  steeped in mystery and history, combined with mid-air wire drawings, I create new possibilities to explore sculptural kinetic ideas. 

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