“My craft is founded in the doing. I see what some might consider junk as source materials, beginnings to my art-making process. I piece together disparate objects and watch them compromise and accommodate one another in their process of becoming something new. There are four ideas that guide the principles of my creative process: Containment, Constraints, Compulsion, and Correlative.”
“Containment: My work often begins with the frame of each piece. I am interested in how that frame can begin the creative process. By looking at the structure of frame, I begin to see what is inside, how it is contained, when and if it spills out of the container. This notion of containment is crucial to the work. It represents the surface tension or threshold to any given art piece.”
“Constraints: Applying my practices as a poet (working through constraints) to my art is a natural progression of my creative process. By incorporating constraints, such as limiting myself to using certain tools or materials, there is an element of chance that is introduced to the work. It is the very emergence of that chance that compels me to create.” “Compulsion: So much of my art is based on this concept. My art is grounded in a compulsive drive to make things fit. I spend hours and days studying materials to find new meaning in their existence, new ways of making these objects fit into our time and consciousness. My obsession leads me to collect. A single wishbone makes for a conversation at the dinner table, but a thousand wishbones are a meditation on life.” “Correlative: At the heart of my being is the desire to tell a story. I strive to create a voice within the art that tells a story in its rendering and forms a bond between the object of the art and the person looking at it. I see these disparate elements coming together to create new worlds and ways of thinking.”