Cloud Studies

2020 - 2021

Painting daily for months, the brooms fell away. I concentrated on the skies smeared by high intensity wild fires. The clouds became smoke rings, dying coral atolls and the residue of nuclear explosions.

Sweeping Expanse, Five-panel watercolor on Arches paper

Sweeping Expanse Panel 1

Endless Skies: Two, watercolor on Stonehenge black paper

Endless Skies: Fire, watercolor on Stonehenge black paper

The Sweeper Series

2020

The pandemic awarded me a studio residency at home. These watercolors build on a recent broom installation informed by climate change. Starting from idealized portraits of push brooms and household brooms, I explored human activity sweeping clouds and waves.

Deep Blue Sea, watercolor triptych

Sweeping, watercolor

Sweeping #4, watercolor

Taliesin West Cacti

2015

During a month at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture as Taliesin Artist in Residence I created a series of sculptures informed by Arizona’s Sonoran desert cacti and architectural metals and hardware.

Cactus Cart

Torso, young saguaro

Taliesin Ceramics

2015

During a month at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture as Taliesin Artist in Residence I created glazed ceramic sculptures informed by bird adapations to Sonoran desert cacti. Nests in mature saguaro cacti, Arizona’s state tree, are dug into the main truck by the Gila woodpecker. The plant protects itself, hardening into a permanent hole that other birds and reptiles use when the bird architect leaves. The cactus wren builds oblong nests between the cholla cactus’ thorny branches. Missing my studio, I also made ceramic portraits of my hammers.

Gila Boot

Ceramic Hammers

Wren Nest

Turtle Box

An interactive work with vintage turtle skeleton illustration and pop beads in a cork case.

Untitled - 1978

The glass captures the detritus from forming a hollow in a spent lithographic limestone.

Stalker - 2012

Seven keyholes allow a glimpse of opaque eye shades lurking behind tinted glass.

Sweepers

2013

Sculptural series with altered brooms as stationary sculpture and motorized ceiling-mounted installation.

Domestic Combine

2013

This combine sculpture pairs an old broom in a new wig and a young broom portrait.

Domestic 2

2012

The second in a series of oil on board portraits of every broom in the studio.

Untitled

2001

One in a series of gouaches, this triptych contrasts opaque colors with the golden mean of amphorae.

Measure

1986

This large pastel contrasts the gorilla skull with a golden ruler.