HOME SPIRITS Series - Works in this group explore the idea that home holds mindset, belief system and behavior. Homes are both protectively concealing and totally revealing. These pieces are portraits of place which lay bare the personal within.

HOME SPIRITS - PROSPERITY

Candy-colored American dream world,

Shrink-wrapped and sanitized,

Isolated, insulated,

Cyberspaced and solipsistic . . .

Needs created,

Needs met,

PROSPERITY

PROSPERITY, Segmented photo transfer, watercolor, colored pencil, collaged inclusions, plastic-wrapped canvas, money rolls, H50"W52" 2002. The home PROSPERITY has it all,- oversized, ostentatious, and super conventional.

HOME SPIRITS - DESPAIR

A single flame,

The human spirit,

Is still burning,

But near extinguished . . .

And cannot match in brilliance,

The vivid, bitter colors

Of DESPAIR.

DESPAIR, 3d assemblage of building photos with wood frames, peeling blue paint sky, curved cloud area with illuminated candle photo, darkened plaster life-cast arm with child's photos, demolition tools on stained canvas, H52"W50"D2" 2002. A multi-family dwelling, DESPAIR was photographed in ruins within a gentrifying area of Washington, DC. Inferred are the displacement and feelings of former low-income residents.

HOME SPIRITS - VACUITY

Going through the motions,

Unaware,

Mindless and unfeeling,

As if the wind alone

Lives there.

VACUITY, Negative rice-paper lifecast from plaster lifecast, fabric curtains, stained glass windows, wood "home" cut-out, 3D on painted background, H36"W48"D2," 2001. In VACUITY, curtains blow aimlessly into space and disembodied heads are without content.

HOME SPIRITS - ANXIETY

Troubled dependencies . . .

A tenuous tightrope,

Stretched high

Above its torn safety net,

Appearances of normalcy,

Just slightly skewed,

Mask superhuman effort

To control

CHAOS

ANXIETY, Wood cut-out home with windows revealing troubled and unexpected imagery. H36”W48,” acrylic with colored pencil drawing, torn silver netting, string, caution tape, mixed, 2001.

HOME SPIRITS - NEGLECT

Innocence

Held captive and unsheltered,

Its fragile petals

Tossed against the wind

In helpless, passive,

Semi-conscious resignation,

Expecting,

Nothing

NEGLECT, 3D assemblage with weathered wood “home,” transparent photo facade with windows revealing neglected children and other collaged inclusions, plaster life-casts, photos, dried rose petals and thorns, rust, H30”W30”D2,” 2002. “Children and roses reflect their care.” William Maxwell

MORE WORKS:

HEAD GAMES

In the Game of Life,

Face is facade,

Often false, two-faced,

Strategically designed for winning.

Dark mind, loving message,

A charming opportunist.

Beauty speaks brutality,

Masked, manipulating.

Inevitably, impermanence asserts,

Death wins,

Elegant facade decaying.

HEAD GAMES, 3D assemblage with plaster life casts and photos, photo transfer, gauze, cut mirror, rust, rose petals, thorns, mixed, H36”W28,” 1999.

LIFEDANCE

Lifedance,

Silent, cyclical,

Always spinning far too fast,

In endless rhythms,

Of young and old.

LIFEDANCE, Silent, spinning turntable covered with photo transfers and photo transparencies, plaster life cast feet, H4”W17”D5,” 2004. 3D work that looks at the continuous overlapping of generations.

IT SLIPPED THRU MY FINGERS

"Qu'as tu fait, o toi que voila?

Pleurant sans cesse,

Dis, qu'as tu fait, toi que voila

De ta jeunesse?"

Paul Verlaine, 1873

IT SLIPPED THRU MY FINGERS, Graphite drawing, plaster lifecast arms, rose phototransfer, dried dahlia, locket with old photos, mixed, H36"W29"D4," 2003. This work examines the fleeting nature of youth and the universal revelation that aging and decay eventually overtake everyone and everything.

GLOBALIZED NICARAGUA

Across the world, even low-income populations now prioritize cell phones. Virtually everyone is now connected and all want what everyone else has.

While visiting Nicaragua, I watched children leaving a private school. While dressed in "uniform" attire, each of them also carried some unique item that featured a worldly sophisticated image. This was in sharp contrast to choices of their elders, who seemed to prefer traditional dress and who often sold tribal paintings, molas, and other ethnic handicrafts. Alternately, a widespread desire for worldly popular culture among the "connected" young was definitely present, and this drawing looks at an increasingly unified world aesthetic.