Driftwood seems like an intrinsic love, having grown up on an island and a boat. All the people I love dearly are weathered soft by the sea. I think I come back to it again and again as a medium because it reminds me of our bones. How one day we will all be the same, softened by time. Only our most elemental lines preserved. And then my driftwood endeavors cause me to saw through a piece and I am able to identify a limb just by the smell of the saw dust. And I’ll jump about like I have cracked open a geode at the scent of balsam fir. These are the things I muse about.
Driftwood. Old bones. Salt licked. Sun stripped. Out to sea. I love you. I have always loved you. And I’ll keep loving you again and again.
What is a wreath? An emblem of home, of hearth, of merriment. A circle; the primordial shape. A portal to the woods, to the over-grown alleys, to my mother-in-law’s garden. Wreaths are for the meanderers, who quicken at life gone-to-seed. Wreaths are for those that don’t see bracken as browned and brittle but it’s dried curves as the meridian of their final dance. Wreaths are a final dance. I have been weaving bits of botanicals together this season in this form almost daily. I let the materials tell me how they want to move and let them hold themselves together. I have shed wire, glue, and rings in this work. A reminder that all we ever need is our natural world…
It is always an honor to create a ceremony installation. The task is not just to please the eye, but to mark a threshold that is the entrance into matrimony.
I am a big believer that the greatest art is always signed by nature itself. Whether it's a turtle's shell, a hummingbird's nest, or a knot in a tree, my being is left brimming in revere. I am currently putting off real life with a month in Costa Rica. Here, it is easy to applaud the greenery, the shadows cast by palm fronds, the roots of an orchid embracing a tree. It is easy to forget to see the beauty of death in all the fruitful life. These three leaves, collected walking back from the beach, struck me with their grace. They seemed to be preforming a fluid dance to decay. And once again I bowed down to the nature of things. I absorbed their lesson that sculpture is movement at a glimpse.
