Artist statement:
As a sculptor, my interest in the natural world rests both in art and science. I work within the two fields using art as a vehicle for translating the patterns and processes of the natural world into the language of human understanding.
I am interested in showing the invisible aspects microorganisms and their complicated relationships of eating and being eaten, the spiraling hydrological patterns of a stream, the mosaic of growth in a vacant lot, the prevailing winds and their effects on vegetation, the flow of water through a living system. Often people think that nature ends where the city begins. But natural processes are always occurring in the city. I like to explore the idea of nature in the city and make it visible to people. I look for sites which give me the opportunity to bring the patterns and processes of the natural world into the built environment.
In my work, I mesh the clarity of diagrams, the beauty of natural forms and the visceral sense of the site. My art creates a comprehensible visual metaphor for an otherwise invisible natural process.
About the auction item:
Each day of the Calendar of Rain exhibit was represented by a bottle sandblasted with that day’s date. The bottle for each calendar day was placed under a flask. If it rained or snowed that day, the precipitation was funneled into a bottle. After 24 hours, the bottle was capped and placed back into the calendar. The exhibited collection of 12 months of bottles with various levels of water formed an innovative graph of annual rainfall. The auction item consists of four of these bottles.