Leaves, Branches and Roots

I have used the comfortable and familiar images of leaves, branches and roots to create metaphorical references to a wide range of issues. They can represent nature, or aspects of natural processes, but can also serve as a human stand in. As I work on a sculpture my thinking often drifts to specific events or concerns. The use of natural elements to metaphorically represent human issues allows me the freedom to think about very specific concerns and yet express my response to them in an abstract way allowing the issues to be perceived in a general impersonal way.

I have little interest in telling a rational narrative or didactic story. Rather I want to marry my thinking about issues with the sculptural and creative act of making a sculpture and carry the viewer through the experience with me. The use of sculpture as the physical medium of expression for this creative journey allows for a mixing of the visceral, sensual and material aspects of the sculpting with the conceptual issues in a particular way; materials and processes also become metaphoric in a parallel and interactive way with the metaphors created with the natural imagery. An issue such as growth can simultaneously be present in the sculpture as the image of a branch, the growth history of an actual piece of wood, the creative process of growing a sculpture, and the metaphorical references embedded in all of these aspects.