The work is Contemporary Abstract Sculpture. Created from thick, solid steel and/or bronze, they convey strength, endurance, and both fluidity and ruggedness. I call this body of work #LyricalSteel. There are two major sub-bodies to my work – one recalling the natural lines of the river and rock formations of my home in Colorado and one strongly architectural.
There is a definite minimalist Asian aesthetic to my sculpture, but I often end up with elements of Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Bauhaus, Mid-Century, and Prairie School Architecture. I’ve had patrons link my work to musical notation, Kandinsky, and Frank Lloyd Wright. They are part sculpture, part drawings on air.
Major influences that are not necessarily obvious in my work are Mark Rothko, Richard Serra, Edward Hopper, and Louise Nevelson.
My pieces are drawn very spontaneously. Sometimes a drawing for a sculpture is one stroke taking no more than a second. Sometimes there may be a few elements, but those are also sketched nearly unconsciously. Hundreds of strokes may be sketched and tossed away to get the one perfect stroke. The result is a totally unplanned art object that comes from the unconscious. I rarely start a blank sheet with any idea of what I’m going to sketch.
As a starting point for the fabrication of my pieces, I scour machine shops for offcuts and scraps of industrial steel. These would normally be sent off for recycling, which means melting them down, then combining with other like scrap to produce a new sheet of steel. Instead of that lengthy, energy-consuming process, I’m able to repurpose the scraps as the starting point for one of my abstract sculptures.
The solid metal used creates a heft and presence in these minimal contemporary sculptures that conveys a permanence. They are nearly monolithic and will stand the test of time in a family.