ABOUT MY PERSONAL APPROACH TO ART WORK
My personal art work focus involves the use of natural materials to create collage and assemblage pieces under the broad rubric of “Earth Matters”. Stories and poems are part of my creative process often adding a meditative quality to my work. Though my work includes many themes…. underneath everything, my work is “about Earth Matters”. Adding meaning to my life, is this…that my long time interests in global issues once again shows up…this time they are expressed, not through words, but in complex and multi layered images, and in relationships and processes that include art.
Taking my lead from practices of the Bakatla potters I lived with in Botswana, Southern Africa, I look down at the ground…to find materials I can use… I call these materials “riff raff from the planet floor”…pieces of bark, beads, botanicals, textiles, feathers, stones etc… When gathered together, these materials have a cadence, a spirt, a flow, a feeling. Many of these materials are such that, if left on the ground another week, would decompose and disappear. In working this way, I reference the fragility of the planet….how all living systems, rivers, oceans, streams, air, soil, climate, seeds, food, even peoples…need attention. The very survival of many earth systems is at a tipping point. Many of my figures are ‘ancestors’ whose energy reminds us of our early history and our long evolution. Through these creations stories are generated and I am drawn to remember, in personal ways, how it is, that the earth matters.