Intimate Immensity

reclaimed wood, copper, steel, & iron, pastel, acrylic, ceramic, and bronze

I hope to frame this work within shifting squares and transparent cubes as an imperfect altar on which traditionally sacred imagery, old bug-infested apple trees, warped palette wood, polished floors, sacred rivers and water drills are mixed together in an open-walled space.

I mean no irreverence to the traditionally sacred, but I intend to call attention to the elements of sacredness coursing through the imperfect, throwing the border between the two into kinetic instability.

I create cast iron anchors, but their form is swept up intothe kinetic shapes of seeds sprouting and buds twisting asthey grow. They are not fixed to any boat, but their chains,forged with writhing lines and falling apart at the seams,run off into a loose river of driftwood and clay underneatha warped bridge. The boat that is their mate, made fromirregular, cracked planks, is suspended on the rafters of ahouse built with transparent walls.

The cube is not cemented in its role as a grid of cubicle walls, but becomes a shifting image of fluidity and responsiveness in this work. I employ it reverently, echoing the 90-degree angles of the reclaimed wood that I collect.

I make this choice instead of forcing organic shapes out of a square- sawn board, and rendering square walls with shifting lines and multiple edges. I treat wood reclaimed from the trash reverently because I find in its imperfection an embedded sacredness more profound than that of grand architectural statements meant to overshadow the homes around them.

I see a formal resemblance between its arched hull and the arched ceilings of cathedrals. Fluidity across divided words (boat and roof, sea-level and heaven-bound cathedral peak) is crafted by threads of formal connection.