I make imaginary landscapes and environments filled with plants, people, supernatural beings, strange beasts and the psychological tensions occurring between them. Their relationships heighten the atmosphere and give it an intense energy and a curious, surreal undertone.

In these drawings, my goal is to "sculpt" the paper as an environment. The subject of the drawing is not a form within a space, but is the form/space relationship itself. I do this by juxtaposing light and dark. Misty layers of grays recede into an ambiguous depth of ground, which winds around, weaves in and out and flows back again into the more prominent forms of the drawing. I use the graphite pencils as if I were making a "carving", marking every bit of the ground in a rhythmic texture of strokes.

Whereas the graphite drawings are fantasy landscapes, my watercolors are drawn and painted from real life: garden scenes, friends and acquaintances who have posed for me. Some of the places are painted during trips, mainly to France. Most of the gardens are from Vashon Island, in the Pacific Northwest, my home of many years.

I am attracted to the luminous transparency and rich hues of watercolors and the many ways that water seeps into the paper. I “see” many colors in what may look to most people like uniform neutrals — human skin, for example, which to me is alive with colors. I shape the whole ground with sculptural colored areas, a little like puzzle pieces that fit together into a whole. I build up depth and form through layers of color and texture to infuse the painting with electrified energy.

Mixed Media

PAST WORK:
This work represents a thirty-year span! In the late 1970s, as a recent MFA graduate, I drew from my dance background to make life-sized forms symbolic of the “physical body” in soft ephemeral materials such as cast latex, which disintegrates over time. This human-scale work led me to create sculptural installations for dance concerts and to design sets for theatre.

In the early ’80s I became a practitioner of Buddhist meditation, which gradually changed how I related to the human figure in my artwork. I began using the figure as a symbol for states of consciousness. At the same time, I became interested in the physical and spiritual properties of water and wanted to apply my understanding of the movement of water to the structure and gestures of the human figure. A body of moving water creates a temporary form (e.g. a tube of water coming out of a faucet or a sheet of water flowing down a pane of glass — the water is shaped by what is holding it). For me this was a metaphor for the stream of a human life that is temporarily “held” by a form, the body. I also saw the body as a vessel or container of consciousness.

Always drawn to the clay modeling process, I eventually moved from cast latex to high fire porcelain, and from abstraction to representation of the human figure. The white translucence of porcelain was compelling; however, the size limitation of the material imposed restrictions that I did not like. So I moved on to explore cast paper, where I could create lightweight forms on a much larger scale. This medium has the properties of both “hard” fired clay and “soft” fibrous materials. Its white surface allows for drawing in color. You can see this medium in my Cast Paper Gallery.

I worked in cast paper into the early ’90s, when I began feeling the need to explore a more durable, outdoor medium: cast concrete. You can see a portfolio of the cast concrete water bowls, fountains and pedestals I made for the garden in a production studio in the Northwest during the 1990s if you click on the Archive section.

The final pieces included in Past Work are guardian figures and guardian heads in cast concrete, meant to express a benevolent sense of stewardship toward the landscape. They were made in 2000-2003, just before I closed my production studio in Seattle and moved to the Bay Area.

Cast Paper

These figurative wall sculptures are inspired by puppets and paper dolls, which I enjoyed as a child. As an adult I discovered the lively commercial paper figures sold in France – puppets that children could buy and cut out. The figures were archetypes from the French folk and popular traditions – dance hall girls, clowns, and a very ugly character called “Polichinelle.” The torsos and heads were stamped in the center of sturdy paper cards, with the four limbs arranged around, like dismembered people with all their limbs floating away! Upon returning home I modeled a harlequin figure in relief onto a 3’x4’ rectangular clay slab (or “ground”) that reminded me of these French puppet cards. I made a plaster mold of this giant clay “card” and used it to cast torsos and limbs in paper pulp.

As in the “Harlequin” piece, my paper casting process begins with modeling a form in clay, then applying a plaster mold. The clay is taken out and the mold is cast in paper pulp. I use pulp beaten from cotton fibers and dispersed into a large tub of water. I dip a screen into the tub and then put the pulp-covered screen through a press to squeeze out the water. The resulting layer of wet paper is hand-pressed into the mold. Once the molded paper forms are dry, I can assemble them, color them with chalk pastels or add fabric parts.

Each of these figures represents a certain feeling state. Some allude to a deeply mystical, ecstatic connection to Nature. Others express a profound sense of grief or irony over the impending catastrophic decline of the natural world, caused by the human species.