Foundation Section A

I am equally an artist and an educator.

As an artist, I create three dimensional objects, installations, and videos that often include the process of dismantling and reconstructing as a way of exploring various aspects of cognition. I have exhibited nationally, have artworks in private collections, and most recently was the Artist in Residence for the U.S. National Park Service at Joshua Tree.

As an educator, I am a National Board Certified Teacher and I pride myself in working with students to help facilitate the development of an independent and meaningful artistic process. I utilize the elements of art and the principles of design as fundamentals in developing a visual vocabulary for articulating what you see and what you create.

My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and has received awards such as the Pollock Krasner Grant, California Community Foundation Grant, Bemis Center Residency and Sculpture Space Residency. I make sculptures, drawings, and paintings that are visually abstract in nature, and are inspired by architecture, light, and space. Ideas and research drive the work, then materials and configurations are chosen to best serve those ideas. The boundaries of materials and dimensions seems secondary to me, the work tells you where it wants to go. I am a firm believer in the daily practice of work, of approaching the problem at hand with a sense of experimentation and constant questioning, and that the challenge of hands on manipulation of form and space is transformational, for the artwork and for the artist. I am a lover of material, of allowing the inherent qualities of the material be present and be allowed to speak. In the classroom I encourage students to push themselves and to enjoy the unexpected places the creative problem solving process can lead them, all the while developing their technical abilities to allow their ideas to reach their deserved capacities.

The art of teaching Life Drawing reflects my studio practice that centers on the challenge of painting image-records born of my life long fascination with the people and places of the American West.

Landscape and the patterns of weather that cloak it is temporal and ever in flux.

My art like my teaching, seeks to study and record that unfolding visual journey with the universal language of abstraction.

I love the collaborative improvisation of the Life Drawing studio which pivots on the creative energy between the artist and the model.