Environmental Elements: Remnants (the stick series)

My stick drawings are all about paying careful attention and giving recognition. Initially I thought of them as remnants, “that which is left behind” on a beach, a shore, a marriage of sorts....still carrying qualities from its original relationship yet becoming an entity of its own while establishing new relationships. The broken or eroded pieces of driftwood reflect aging, presenting new identities as remnants of earlier life forms. “Blended Family” was the first obvious reference to such symbolism. The sticks come from deeply personal environments. Unique in character, each casts an imprint of its existence. By isolation, I have given them shrine-like status. Some new drawings, in which the sticks still lie down, act as metaphors for “landscape” and seeing the world in its ‘oneness”. Others shift to a standing up orientation, immediately suggesting figurative social groups. These encourage playful comment and another interpretation. My most recently completed stick drawing also refers to the sticks’ original habitat, but now an urban one, one that reflects the environment I have inhabited for most of my adult like. Instead of reflecting the wearing down of erosion by water, these reflect erosion by wind. Both reveal the randomness of weather’s force, the vulnerability that comes with age, and eventually a “recycling” / a return to earth.

Sumac Sycamore Series

The “Sumac Sycamore” works began with another familiar view overlooking a large body of water - this time through a colony of “dancing” thinned out sumacs. The view shared all of my keenest interests: memories of solace and childhood explorations along Lake Michigan, linear rhythms of music and dance, real and implied space.

Trees: Moving to Essentials from Realism to Abstraction Across Media

Here I focus on “tree and tree-ness”.

I use this subject symbolically in four ways:

literally for our natural environment;

spiritually of myself,

both as a human being and as a member of a blended family;

as a reference to home and body;

and, as an element of landscape.

The trees started out from specific child- and neighborhood views. They quickly became metaphors for aging and pillars of society. I wrote a poem to accompany the Elder series. Elms in winter reveal marvelous positive and negative spaces and their limbs easily lent themselves to my reduction of visual linear elements into rhythmic motifs and playful abstractions.