Environmental Structures

Environmental Structures, created in 2018-19, are built using locally harvested rock as the foundation and inspiration of the forms.

The rock is the starting point and it represents the underpinning of nature that we use to construct our lives. Wood is the most sustainable and elemental material that human beings have worked with since the advent of tools, and this is the structural material with which the sculptures are fabricated. The intimate process of scribing wood to stone affords me the time to experience and contemplate the primal act of connecting two fundamental materials together. In my contemplation I observe that our species has become left brain dominant and intellectually biased, resulting in technology, entertainment, and a virtual reality that overshadows our relationship with intuition and the mystery of life.

Working with wood requires a nuanced coordination between hand, eye, and tool. My experience during this focused handwork is that creative energy flows most freely while in the process of intense problem solving. This has led me to theorize that hands hold a profound intelligence and act as a bridge or balancing point between the intellectual and intuitive aspects of our natures. The stacked box forms of the sculptures represent the compartmentalized way we tend to think, as well as our constant pursuit to acquire power, wealth, and objects. The box forms, though structurally sound, are precariously balanced and could topple; similarly, humanity is in a precarious moment of balance in its evolutionary process. The balance we must achieve to endure sustainability and civility relies in our mind and in our heart, it will take the symmetry of our brain function and an honoring of our masculine and the feminine natures to achieve this equilibrium.