I started working with wood in 1998, after a year teaching woodworking to elementary school students. Their fascination with the process, pleasure in using the tools, and delight with the physicality of the finished objects inspired me in my own work to move from canvas to wood. Wood as a material has a history, references a previous life, and lends itself to a dynamic interplay in the creative process which canvas lacks. The wood's properties--grain, knots, etc.--play an integral part in my decision-making throughout the process as well as in the finished work. Sometimes I jump on the planks which will roughly break along the grain, affect that break, then put the planks back together again--before I even begin with the subject matter.
The quality of surface is of utmost importance to me in both the process and the end product. To achieve such surfaces to my satisfaction, I employ traditional and non-traditional techniques involving anything from common wood stains to beer and fire, and any combinations to create unique, unexpected effects. I will actively distress new wood to appear antique and on occasion, the opposite.
This balance between tradition and innovation is one of the several dichotomies, dialogues, and tensions which are prevalent throughout most of my work. Other such pairings include: the obvoius--square and circle, geometric and organic, man-made and natural, synthetic and organic, industrial and artisanal, order and entropy or chaos, actuality and illusion, etc. It is with these dualities--these tensions--that I approach the materials and subject matter in an attempt to create an active dialogue--a certain dynamic-- within the work, to find a common ground, a balance, a harmony based somewhere in logical sensiblities, so that the piece whose origins lie in apparent oppositions offers a wholeness, a unity, a singularity, simplicity, sometimes a zen-like quietude, when viewed.
