Congratulations.
The jury & the voters have spoken.

About this Project

I make social spaces where people interact in ways they normally don't. These spaces need to be experienced rather than looked at through images.

'Within' was a new distillation, or reduction of the broad range of found objects & materials used in the prior 'Ocean' project at the Creative Alliance. I wanted to manipulate the gallery space towards a kind of provocative implosion of social 'norms' (keeping others at arm's length) through an intense physical intimacy with unconventional materials. The main intent was to present a submersive, visceral experience that tests one's perceptions and possible phobias. Some found the work overwhelming and constrictive, others opened up their creative imaginations and made multiple visits.

Did it work? The dense environment of interconnecting intimate spaces was intended as a possible playground for any age, more of implication than anything express, geared towards creative introspection that could be seen as defining my creative process in an abstract, but visceral way- how all things are connected even when they don't appear to be. But I prefer to stay out of the way of how people define them.

The lights faded in and out, the fans blew the materials about- it's a way of looking that's difficult for me to objectively critique. (Any comments?) After it was up, it seemed to me to be largely about seduction- a dance of a thousand veils- and also frustratingly difficult to document. The spaces were too dense, too layered- but that was the point.

As an experience it was another matter. Ask anyone at the Whole Gallery. Some people ended up living in it. It was a blast to make.

About this Project

Sondheim Semi-Finalists Exhibition, 2009-
A 30 foot high installation in the atrium of the Meyerhof Gallery, MICA. (Its difficult to shoot successful still images! ) The floor space was roughly fifteen by twenty feet. The design is modular, with two thirds of the tower suspended from the ceiling. (A real thrill installing...) This was then attached to a standing wood supporting structure on the gallery floor. Five sided, it contained a towering room full of wind blowing about layers of colorful, torn materials interlaced with Mylar strips. A red mattress commanded the floor.

Attached to the ceiling 30 feet above, a special projector flooded the interior with a shifting range of colors, much like an underwater effect. The tower also contained a second smaller dimly lit, secret room lined in a muted green silk, which covered a lone chair. Sitting down and looking up high above, I had suspended the word 'HOPE', which was cut out of weathered wood and which had broken and repaired several times. Part of the surface is covered in 24k. Small bits of light from the big room filtered through the connecting wall and flickered about it.

The project was loosely based upon St Theresa of Avila's remarkable book, The Interior Castle, (Riverhead Books, 2003), which is about the journey into the interior of one's soul. (I'm not Catholic, but I highly recommend it to everyone.) In the book, she explained that most people get stuck in dealing with external issues & outward appearances, and never discover the amazing journey into their own souls.

Consequently, the outside of the Fortress was darkly apocalyptic in its implications as a way to reflect the increasing dilemmas facing our planet. The surface is made of black plastic, as a way to quietly suggest crude oil and energy politics and its impact upon our endangered environment. The surface contained several burned doors inset with burned children's shoes, framed by twelve foot long burned wood planks. A single red costume served as a visceral spill- a suggestion of carnage. The lyrics to a song was posted on the wall, as a form of explanation. (see first image text)

As the entrance was partially obscured and the towering mass was gloomy, if not threatening, many people at Artscape did not enter the wildly colorful interior. Of those who did, many were so disorientated that they easily missed the secret room. This was resolved by stationing volunteers inside to invite people into the second room.

Plastics, bamboo, barrel fans, wire, mattress, wood, 24k, projector, Mylar, one suspended golden apple.

About this Project

A global nomad, a sailor- my identity flows from a colorful upbringing amid an array of contrasting cultures, from the Asia Pacific islands to Central America. This gave rise to certain questions and contradictions in my identity and creative thinking. As a result, I work concurrently in several parallel mixed media experimental modes, in which I'm interested in hunting the surprises and implications of ideas and materials that crisscross multicultural filters. These series often recycle back in on one another, evolving the work in unexpected ways. Driving those concerns is the question of the figure, it's spiritual presence and it's quest towards understanding the reason for existence. Why are we here? Who are we? Where are we going?

In 2000, I began a new eco/socio/political matrix: constructing large-scale public works as temporary, walk through... ship-shaped multipurpose installations that also served as a crucible for the development of related photography, video and performance works. These works forged a new identity for me even as they delved directly into the ship as universal womb, cradle and coffin, out of which rises the 'Tree of Life'.

In 2006 the sixth project in the series, The Sky Below, Earth Above: Forest House, (see the project below) shifted this direction into new concerns. Constructed upon the ruined foundation of a hunting lodge with wood and plastics collected from the Chesapeake Bay, I chose to set aside the ship shape as an experiment and in the process, unexpectedly hit a raw nerve in conservative Annapolis.

The project’s spiritual presence was condemned as either a Satanist altar or as a Christian church- before being prematurely torn down in Jan 07, despite considerable public support. (Sculpture Magazine-5/07, PG 12) This taught me just how powerfully those with self-righteous religious attitudes could misinterpret an open-handed work of art and thus destroy it. It's small wonder our planet is in so much trouble.

That shock fired a wild new synthesis in 2007- that began with three large indoor experimental installations in Baltimore. Each contained 7 or 8 interconnected wind-blown, plastic-strewn, themed rooms. They were an intuitive push into new ideas and contexts. Although the feedback was positive,they were often overwrought, with a visceral complexity that's taken me months to digest.
At turns claustrophobic and apocalyptic, these spaces included painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, projected video and performance all together for the first time- as a critique of consumerist culture out of balance.

This elliptical recycling explores the uncomfortable, the marginal and the overloaded, utilizing as muse the tension between implied content and explicit materials or imagery. Ideas and shapes are transformed through new juxtapositions, even as the inherent systems ebb and flow from reductive to carnival-like baroque parameters.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote- "Wrecked is the ship of pearl that sailed the unshadowed Main..."

Now I'm gathering the debris, the lessons and reworking and refining a new synthesis in what is proving to be one of the most productive periods of my life.

Making art can be seen as a glorious, gritty kind of insanity that fishes and weaves beyond social conformities- as a way to hold up a mirror to the turbulent dilemma of the human condition.

It’s an ongoing quest that began as a self absorbed, putting 'things-into-some-semblance-of-meaning', only to discover later in life that intention and content is often quicksilver at best- escaping into all dimensions, moving signposts from micro to macro-vision.

About this Project

Created at Quiet Waters Park in 9/2006, this four room interactive multi-level installation was constructed upon the ruins of a hunting lodge. Made of driftwood and found objects collected from the bay, it was intended as a place of contemplation in order to question humanity's horrific relationship with our collapsing environment. This came about because of a bay beach i'd been going to since 1989. For the first several years, i would collect all of the trash i'd find along that mile of cliffs. Then it began to overwhelm the beach.

So, I determined to make a work that would somehow reflect this in some small way- by placing some of this stuff into a challenging context. What resulted surprised me in many ways, taking a turn towards an unintended spiritual presence.

This proved to be the most controversial project of my career. Condemned by two small groups of people as either a illegal religious Christian chapel on government land- or as a Satanist sacrifice center, it rapidly became the center of a storm that resulted in coverage by the Associated Press and an article in Sculpture Magazine. The result was, despite hundreds of local people supporting it and a professional offer to take the case to court (for free), those people bypassed the director of the state park system (who had visited it and delightfully approved the project)... and managed to get it torn down prematurely- condemned by the State as a building without a building permit!
A DVD is available.

About this Project

A critique on our consumerist culture gone wild, an exploration of apocalyptic themes and a romp of visual, visceral overload. Constructed in March 2007 for one month in the main gallery of the Creative Alliance, this eight room experimental installation was my first ship-shaped work done inside a gallery. (There were 7 prior ships, constructed in public locations.)

A highly artificial construct of media, manufactured artifacts and plastics, Ocean's inward looking metaphors deconstructs our dysfunctional relationship with the natural world and ourselves.

68'long, it was a major aesthetic shift from the prior, largely wooden ships. Incorporating a range of diverse, but related materials and found objects, as well as five videos, oscillating fans blowing hanging materials about, an inverted antique sailing skiff as the roof of one room, a host of performance costumes, a range of seating options, a video projection room that intersected video with slide images in a random, changing pattern, and a softly padded, silk lined 'sex cage' where visitors were prone to taking naps.

When is too much too much? The art world idiom of 'less is more' has many applications, depending on the content and context of a work. Being that Ocean was designed as a mirror to our culture at large, this was not one of those moments.

About this Project

I began making sculpture in Paris in 1986, using found metal, which continued in Los Angeles in 1988. In graduate school I expanded to using found objects and other materials on wood structures- mixing painting and sculpture. Beginning in 1991 I moved to a wood, fabric and acrylic system, sometimes to only wood and acrylic as in A Question of Balance- a work intended to be moved into an almost endless array of positions- which I encourage others to do. (Collaboration is a central aspect of certain works.)

These are a few samplings of recent and older series which incorporate a variety of materials and ideas. They can be distillations of larger installations, or come out of a related concern- but taken along a certain materials process just for the sheer joy of discovery. Certain works often represent larger bodies of work- such as Ax Tail Slugger (60 plus works), which is a decade old wall-based format that explores new materials and relationships upon a central organic/architectural structure reflecting a larger and older floor based series.

About this Project

This group is a selection among two decades of sculpture. Each image represents a series. Some series only have a few pieces while others have as many as sixty or more works.

About this Project

My performance work began during Artscape's 1995 Ecstatic Garden of Sublime Delerium. My segment in the maze, The Arbor of Unfulfilled Desire (20'x20'x20') had 8 chambers- a perfect place to experiment with performance in my first costume. This began a continuous experiment that eventually led to the costumes moving out of the installations and becoming their own body of works which continue to this time.

About this Project

These represent a small sampling of my printmaking- mostly A/P editions, traditional etchings and solar etchings. (I began printmaking in 1972-74.) These are distinctly different from my digital prints, which relate to other disciplines, such as photography.

Of special note are the Four Seasons, which are one of a kind A/P prints based upon a curated artist's book series published by Edizioni Pulchinelephanti in Milan. Those books-(two books with 32 copies each)- are not online. A few are still available from each edition, upon request. Anima or The Four Seasons