Artist Statement for
A MATTER OF FORM
at Matter Studio Gallery
Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area during the cultural explosion of the 1960s, I studied architecture at Cal-Poly and graduated with an art degree from Brooks Institute of Fine Arts (later Santa Barbara Art Institute) in 1972. Upon graduation, I spent a year in London working for an artist where I worked on several public art projects in England and the US, including projects for the BART system in San Francisco. I have worked in the fields of architecture and design all the while continuing my explorations of the sculptural medium.
My current sculptures are situated between the constructivist and minimalist traditions in which the language of art relies upon structure, materiality, form, and presence. Although my sculpture has ranged from my early constructions of interconnecting, interchangeable parts to the curving folded forms I am currently exploring, my work has been remarkably consistent in its inquiry of material and form. Using origami as an archetype, my recent sculptures are made by folding and cutting a single plane of material and in that folded plane, I discover an energy which inspires me toward the next fold - an enfolding (unfolding) into complexity. No longer a mere plane; it becomes imbued with intricacies—angles, proportions, relationships, a temporal dimension. That several of these current sculptures seem ready to take flight is no accident, as balance has always been an active component of my work and is used here to underscore the aliveness of these forms.
The modes of my sculpture have varied over the past thirty years-from figurative to non-figurative, abstract to concrete-but the underlying question has always been: Is the form sufficient to hold the vision? I am interested not in what my sculptures mean, but what they are in themselves. They are their own music, their own song. The meaning of my work rests in experiencing it.