My daughter Meghan coerced me into building this website. I am old school and at best have a tentative relationship with anything digital, especially social media.
I have been an academic for fifty years, equally divided between teaching and administration. Since 2010, my studio practice has fluctuated between clay and drawing. For this website, I have chosen to emphasize the drawings although the first 3 images are of large ceramic platters, motivated primarily by discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope and the platters gradually evolved into the drawings.
In June of 2024, the Webb telescope discovered the most extensive super cluster ever identified. It contains an estimated 26 quadrillion stars. In the same month, in a separate discovery, it spotted a globular star cluster in a galaxy sitting at the edge of time. The light emitted by these stars have taken 13.4 billion years to reach our planet. In the same month, the JWST discovered a shockingly huge black hole that scientists believe was formed in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
I don’t pretend to comprehend the complexities of these discoveries but I am awed by the ever increasing magnitude of the known universe. Just three years ago, it was estimated that the universe radiates out approximately 46 billion light years (or 540 sextillion miles) from our galaxy and since it’s generally acknowledged that the universe is still expanding, that distance increases by the second. Further, our planet is estimated to be between thirteen and fourteen billion years old (a relative infant given the time that has elapsed since the Big Bang) and it is generally acknowledged that planet Earth has “only” a billion years left before it’s consumed by naturally occurring galactic forces. The implications and questions raised by those sorts of discoveries are deeply profound and in general, are what motivate my drawings.
Essentially, the drawings fall into several categories. They are either landscapes featuring vast expanses and big skies, they are my interpretation of the cosmos or they are a hybridized version of both.
I believe strongly in materiality. Everything I make, whether clay or drawing celebrates the physical properties of the material I’m using. Finding a balance between the rational and the intuitive is important, as is a balance between an ordered, geometric structure and an unordered organic sensibility. Stylistically, the drawings vary between atmospheric tranquility and chaotic turbulence, but all are visual interpretations of the phenomena that describes the ever-expanding, known universe. Stylistically, the drawings vary between atmospheric tranquility and chaotic turbulence, but all are visual interpretations of the phenomena that describes the ever-expanding known universe. Depth, color and a fascination with the unknown are a common denominator.