I was always making things when I was a child, from bottle caps and buttons and toothpick.
Anything that happened to be around.
When I was four, for my fourth birthday, I was asked what I wanted.
The only thing I could think of was a roll of aluminum foil.
My own roll of aluminum foil, because I was always getting chest ties for using my mothers
and using it up and squishing it into bunnies and squirrels and all sorts of things like
that.
Well, my work is all about connections and the connections that we make through objects
to another person, another place, another time.
I've always been interested in power objects, like the obvious ones being religious objects
and ritual objects that all throughout history people have used to connect with the divine
of some sort.
But I'm also interested in more of the mundane objects as well that we connect with ordinary
people and I use these things in my work.
In the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in the Greek and Roman wing, there's a case that
has, among other things, a wonderful hand mirror.
This hand mirror has a gorgeous body leaf of a lion's head on it.
It's beautiful, there's absolutely beautiful, but the thing that's the most interesting
about it is to go behind the case and look at it from the back and bend down just a little
bit and you get your own reflection in the mirror.
You feel that connection to that woman 2,000 years ago that looked in the mirror and combed
her hair and did her eye makeup and you think of her and 2,000 years disappears immediately.
I went to Syracuse University and got a BFA. At that time, Syracuse was known for a very
good art school and it was for me, it was very good.
My career was very interesting in that when I graduated from college, I fulfilled a promise
to my 11-year-old self.
When I was young, my family used to go to New York City every holiday season and go and
see Lord and Taylor's Christmas windows and they were very magical.
So when I graduated from college, I found out who did Lord and Taylor's Christmas windows
and I badgered them for a job and I did Lord and Taylor's windows for one season and then
I got a job with a toy company, small toy company in New York and then I got a job with
Fisher Price and they moved me up here to Western New York and I stayed with them for
eight years and then when my daughter was born, I became a freelance toy designer.
So I have been doing toys for many years and then I returned to my very first love which
was sculpture.
It's very difficult for me to choose an influence because everybody influences me.
I did not have a mentor and I did not have a single person who really influenced me.
Everyone did, everyone and even now, everyone does.
And I think that objects communicate on two levels.
There's the archeological level, the level that answers the questions of what is it,
what's it made of, who made it, when, where was it found, whatever and those are really
interesting answers because they give a historical and a sociological context to the object.
All objects communicate those things, at least most of them and some objects communicate
on another level, a direct level that communicates just without words, totally bypasses language
and goes non-verbally directly to the individual experiential unconscious.
Think in terms of an heirloom.
Everyone has something that you either inherited it or you're given it and every time you
see it, it transports you to another time and another place and with other people.
An heirloom, a love token, a souvenir, all types of objects act as a key to open an area
of your memory that normally is closed and art acts on that same direct level and speaking
to the individual experiential unconscious, it does not transport you to another time
and place necessarily, but to an idea or a concept, which explains really why someone
can have a full-blown love affair with an object.
It just speaks to them and another person can walk by and not even notice it, not even
see it.
I tend to try and use as many of these things that connect us to a lot of other people who
have handled them or used them or just saved them and I put them together in my work and
hopefully they magnify and amplify enough so that they connect with you through my work.
The base was probably a wedding gift, probably 30s or 40s and they would have had a glass
globe on it with a hand candle and then a glass bowl would have been in the top for flowers.
Throughout history, birds have been used metaphorically and mythologically because they can do the
one thing that people can't do and that's fly.
And what it does is it gives them a different perspective on the world and life because
people tend to be because of their surroundings and their immediate looking just around them
that they are short-sighted and they don't see the big picture, but because of birds
perspective from above they look down and their normal perspective is everything and
they see the big picture all the time.
The techniques there are really interesting because every piece provides its own challenges
because you're using unusual objects and you're trying to get them fastened so that they're
not going to fall off and sometimes the old hammer and nail doesn't just do it for everything
and you can't solder everything though you can solder some.
I try to hard fasten with screws and bolts and there's almost always a central one or
two poles that go up or rods that go up through the base into the feet and through the feet
sometimes into the body.
It is a challenge, every one of them is a challenge and that's one of the fun things
about working with found objects and unusual pieces is to how to get them together and
how to bring them into one cohesive unit.
The seed crystals are little protected microcosms of the natural world.
I have been working on seed crystals on and off for a number of years and lately I have
been incorporating them into the bird sculptures.
I spoke earlier about connections to another person, a place or a time or an idea and this
is more about our connections to nature and they provide a little window onto the beauty
of nature.
Sometimes nature is so magnificent and so huge and overwhelming that we don't pay attention
to the incredible pattern and texture and variety that is there.
It's overwhelming and so we block it out.
These little crystals hopefully are there to remind us and to open our eyes to the larger
picture.
The word seed crystal comes from the formation of crystals and as an example you can think
of rock candy where you take an individual sugar crystal and suspend it in a super saturated
solution of sugar and water as the solution cools these crystals form very quickly.
A lot of them big crystals form around the initial seed crystal and I think that creative
ideas are formed this way as well.
The most famous example of this would be Newton's theory of gravity and when he had
all the information in his head and it was super saturated the whole idea of gravity
formed around that seed crystal of the apple so ideas form quickly anything can be a seed
crystal.
These I hope will be a seed crystal for the bigger picture of nature.
Making art really has affected everything that I do.
It's a way of seeing.
It's a way of thinking.
It's a way of being and without art I would be just a total different person.
I don't even know who I would be.
I was on a path and it was it just carried me along.
There was no turning.
There was no turning.
I couldn't turn if I wanted to turn.
There was just one path.
For a while when I was in grade school I thought well maybe I could be a vet but no.
I'd make animals instead.
