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I began carving and sculpting wood in 2001. I am a self taught artist. During this initial decade, I have created about one-hundred and twenty-five pieces of art. I have received merit awards in juried shows at the Minestrista Cultural Center in Muncie, Indiana, and I received a Best of Show award (Richard Boston Award) at the 2006 Whitewater Valley Area Artist’s Competition for my Kutambarara Platter. The juror for this competition was the Curator of the Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, Connecticut. This juried competition drew entries from artists in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. The Kutambarara Platter is a large, hand-carved platter from West African Zebrano wood.
I have sold pieces locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally (London and Paris).
My functional wood pieces and sculptures can currently be found at Hoosier Artist Gallery in Nashville, Indiana. Visit hoosierartist.net to visit the gallery website.
I also carve wood pendants that can be custom fitted onto necklaces. Pendants can be found at Brown County Bead Company in Nashville, Indiana.
I live just outside Nashville in beautiful Brown County, Indiana with my wonderful cat.
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I typically create art in series, including hand carved and hand sculpted pieces in wood. Some sources of energy for these are the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest, individual trees, and small streams and pools of water. Examples include a series of numbered shallow basins, spires, stylized human form, and organic sculptures. I also create functional pieces such as bowls, platters, and troughs. I work with both domestic and exotic woods.
I strive to expose essences and irreducible core matter in wood. My art choices and world views derive from a variety of sources – various music, folklore either real or imagined, the beauty of ambiguity and asymmetry, the aesthetic of elegant simplicity (wabi), clean lines, and maintaining a correct state of mind – shoshin – a beginner’s mind.
I work only with seasoned wood, and wood must be certified to meet correct standards of ecological responsibility to our planet. I carve and sculpt mostly with hand tools and a mallet, and I hand sand and hand finish each piece. Each piece that I create is genuinely one of a kind – I don’t measure, and I don’t use templates, cutouts, or patterns of any sort. Again – a beginner’s mind. I believe that art is at its best when it is improvised |
