My work reimagines and reacts to the natural world and what it means to be human in it using a self-created language of hand-sculpted clay petals.  An avid, third-generation gardener and fourth-generation floral crafter, the petal to me is like the atom in the universe, the essence of everything, the smallest part from which all else stems. 

Sculptural, explorative iterations delve into density, scale, gravity, flexibility and structure.  All pieces begin with a hand-sculpted clay petal.  Then that petal is built upon with more petals and turned into a rose, or instead pulled to create a flimsy petal and then built upon to make a tipsy rose, or instead left to itself and pulled and smashed and stretched against the canvas like a paint stroke.  Or the petal is turned on its side like a sleeping child with many other sleeping children- or left alone- or rolled into itself to resemble some sea creature, or pushed to stand tall with other petals like an army of soldiers, or gently pressed to lean, sway, dance, flit. Or rolled up completely into itself like a ball, the petal vocabulary naturally increasing in complexity, adding new letters of expression to a new alphabet.

Several explorative petal series are ongoing - each its own aesthetic, emotional and/or intellectual foray - Garden Bonanzas, Party,  Sky + Line, Response, Personal Narratives, Origins, Shape Play, Reciprocity, Mixed Beds, Little Landscapes, Soil Studies, Movement Studies and Renovation Project.