Since 1993
Artist Statement
Much of my work in Newark uses the city as its source. I am also a preservationist and designer. I record Newark matters and celebrities in ink paintings, public art proposals, playground designs, and porcelain vases.
Newark pumps me up with its eccentrics, rich history, and industrial forms, which inspire me to work in serial themes. Ceramic sculptures of buildings, charcoal drawings of “Threatened Sites”, bridges and “Barbies” or clay dolls (ceramic cylindrical figures modeled in the Japanese proto-historic Haniwa style) are part of my repertoire. For me, art in Newark, NJ always feels unexpected.
I am a realist who draws from life and then interpolates, explores and abstracts in the studio. Recycling is a way of life. I use found objects, scrap steel for welded statuary, and discarded building materials and artifacts for assemblages. I throw on the wheel and roll out clay slabs for tiles, sculptures and dinnerwares. The clay work always comes out differently than anticipated. I love firing kilns and usable art for its double meaning.
I love the Dutch Masters for their light, Greek vases for their precision, Ad Reinhardt for his solemnity, George Ohr for his freedom, Betty Woodman for her inventiveness, Fassbinder for his compassion and Siouxsie Sioux for her feminism. I borrow skulls from the Newark Museum Natural History collection for Tempus Fugit paintings. I make and paint stoneware lekythoi with nudes and buildings, ceramics with abstract glaze drip patterns, constructions made of broken plexiglas, sculptures with brake drums, and gouache paintings of Newark views and historical figures. I visualize artwork that reveals spirituality in a teachable moment.
