I work in a variety of media. My primary forms are pyrographs or burn drawings, thorn works, and video/installation.

The influence of drawing is evident throughout the work. I see the thorn works, constructions made from thorns of the honey locust tree, as three dimensional drawings, like crosshatch drawings in many ways, each mark responding to the one that came before. The pyrographs are drawings made through burning. They’re informed by the agrarian practice of burning the fields to restore nitrogen to the soil.

Installation work, including photography and video, provides a means of documenting the everyday. Whether personal notes and drawings, imagery of a construction worker seemingly at the top of the world, or work gloves retrieved from a manufacturing plant this work is often designed as a lure, to draw people in to an unfamiliar area, an institution, or an underutilized part of the city. Based on the concept that we understand things by virtue of what we already understand, by incorporating some aspect from another's environment into the work, the intent is to draw them in to the sometimes unfamiliar world of art.

My clearest thinking is often the result of walking, a zen like process in which footsteps fall into a rhythm and somehow, revelations arise.

The pyrographs reflect a similar process in that there is an underlying tension, a constant pushing energy that results in a clarity of form. I think of these as a kind of time-based drawings, in that the burning tool must be held in place for as long as it takes to make the mark. Often there is the urge to move forward, to move on with the piece, but the process itself requires that the motion be arrested. Depending on the weather, the wind and humidity, the cycling on and off of the burning tool, the process of mark-making varies, sometimes it moves quickly, sometimes frustratingly slowly. Anxiety builds I’m ready to go, but wait...It’s a very physical process, pushing, pressing, waiting, responding to the mark, the wind, the weight of the air.

My work has been supported by grants from the Salina Art Center, The Lighton International Artist Exchange Program, The Avenue of the Arts Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation Professional Development Workshop and is found in the collections of Sprint Corporation, Hallmark Cards, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, and H&R Block Corporation and in numerous other corporate and private collections. Writings about my work have been published in ArtPapers, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Reader, and The Salina Journal.


vitae.pdf