Working with indigenous, non art materials, such as stone, wood and mud, collected from numerous walks around the United Sates, primarily Florida and Minnesota, my art practice is about mobility, freedom, about place, time, distance, geology, human scale, and the reality of the landscape. Stone is one of the earliest materials used by humans to fashion tools, and one of the preferred materials for collection. Art made by walking in landscapes.
May 14, 2004 · notes
Greek pottery and sculpture was my initial inspiration for a series of drawings done some years ago. I was in Tampa, FL for an opening and decided to visit the Tampa Museum in some of my spare time. I hadn’t noticed until that trip the color relationships in the classical pottery of the Greeks: black figures on red clay, white figures on black, and black figures on natural (tan colored) pottery. You could actually call this a painting because I used a brush, not a pencil or pen.
I started off working with images of (contemporary) construction workers in drawings that looked like Greek pottery. Then I worked on a few related to the slave experience. I didn’t do that many drawings but, I like them in some ways.
I actually used the oxide colored mud I had collected in Minnesota on my very first trip there for the background. I love the red-oxide color and have used it for several projects. I still have a bucket full of it.
April, 2012 · notes
I recently examined one bag of dirt I plan to use for a series of drawings soon. Just plain dirt? No. I’ll grind it and make it into a wet paste that can be applied with a brush, stick, or my finger(s).
June, 2013
Finally, after more than ten years some of what dirt, Minnesota dirt means to me has been explored to some extent with my curated exhibition and article outlining some of my concepts [curator’s soundings…].