Artist Statement

I am like a raven attracted to shiny objects, scrounging in a scrap-metal yard for materials that excite my imagination, turning pieces around and upside down, assessing their potential for a great piece of furniture. Once I found a down-hole drill bit, a graceful spiral of 2 ¾” solid stainless steel used in the oil industry. Now it is the four posts of a poster bed. Another time it was a rusted boom chain used in logging, chunky 6” chain links that I spiraled up at an impossible angle and attached to a tractor seat—one of the most comfortable stools I’ve ever sat in.

The materials I work with, new and used, are my inspiration. If I can push these beyond their original use, if I can employ my engineering skills to manipulate them into a design that’s playful, functional, and stylistically matched to the collector’s vision or venue—that’s satisfaction! So an espresso bar now has a wood tabletop held up by spiraling, curling sections of metal ‘steam’ coming up from the coffee-cup base. And a former executive of the Alaskan Railroad has a gate that sports five different layers of metal, each layer recreating the mountains and trees of an Alaskan landscape, with a train engine coming toward you.

Recently, I’ve discovered the magic of combining stone and wood with metal. Working with mixed media gives me a range of options to create pieces that are solid, strong, and sensuous. Like my dining table of birch wood with a center inlay of Volga blue granite for hot plates: rectangular and stout, it has an arcing metal base, with sun-like rays radiating up to support the top. I am most excited when I push the material, and myself, to the edge of the impossible. If I can create the illusion that a piece is about to tip over, but doesn’t, that a point of contact is only held together by the energy between two sections, or that 300 pounds of material is light as air…but you can sit down, bounce upon, or lay on it, then I’ve met my own personal challenge.