My commitment to sculpture as a profession properly began in 1972 at the Rhode Island School of Design where I studied with Arnold Prince, a sculptor and dancer from the West Indies. The potent element of figurative gesture in Arnold’s work, together with the sheer physicality of carving wood and stone, struck a resonant chord with the artist/athlete in me. Extracting sculptural form from an otherwise motionless, obdurate material was an irresistible challenge, so I began, then, as a carver, wresting human shapes from logs and stone. 

     In the mid 1970’s I took my growing passion for wood and carving to a job as a frame-maker at an antique mill-museum in Arlington, Massachusetts. Exposure there to furniture makers and to techniques of joinery and wood lamination caused my work to become more open and attenuated. Referencing the movements of dancers and athletes, I sought postures for my sculpture that evoked something basic about the human condition: the yearning in the lean of a torso, life's transitoriness reflected in the fleeting turn of a head, and the compelling link between grace and power.

     A return to graduate school (University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth) for a Master of Fine Arts degree in the 90’s deepened my focus. The yeasty atmosphere of an art school had the effect of extending and amplifying my vision of the human figure, and I became increasingly inspired by the similarities between the figure and the shapes of other things: tree limbs, calligraphy, and myriad organic and inorganic forms. The similarities made me think of sculpture as metaphor-making in three dimensions. I worked again with logs and tree parts and discovered bronze casting.

Current Sculpture

     I am working along parallel tracks of representation and abstraction and seeking common ground between the two. With the small bronze figures, I create poses and gestures that are extraordinary or "supra-natural", many of these gleaned and composed from observation or photographs of dancers. While at one level they represent a single moment or sequence of moments, these pieces are meant to signify larger ideas of tension, balance, and transcendence. To the degree that they do that, I consider them abstractions. Conversely, with some of my concurrent large wood projects, the overall construction may read as a flow of apparently abstract elements but then resolve itself with a pair of realistic human hands at its two end points.

     I have moved recently to a new home and studio on some remote Rhode Island pasture land, where for me the connectedness of things is everywhere in the landscape and where large ideas seem to be embodied in the smallest natural object. As I continue to warm to the physical and mental demands of giving sculptural shape to ideas and visions, I am grateful for and welcome this new fertile ground.