1978 – 1989

My 1977 graduate show was titled Emerging Self Images. The bronze figures were wispy, androgynous. Multiple figures shared a base, a world, in isolation from each other. Only the babies had arms; the adult figures were armless. I was congratulated for “capturing the pathos and alienation of modern life.”

After grad school, we stayed in the Eugene area for three more years. I enrolled in community education art classes at Lane Community College to have foundry access. After moving to Port Orford in 1980 , so my husband could pursue his dream job, I no longer had access to inexpensive bronze casting. But I did have an overflowing reject box of cast figures, mostly without arms. Some had been cast without a purpose in mind. Those that had been made with purpose were lifeless and mediocre. Sculptures completed to my satisfaction were rare. Some of the figures were in and out of the reject box multiple times. In frustration, I packed the reject box away, unpacked my chisels and started carving again.

Winter Painted bronze and madrona branches, last revision 1982, 13" x 13" x 28". This figure was originally part of a piece named Shaman. But I knew nothing of shamans. In 1980, I moved to the Oregon coast. It was beautiful. It would some day become the place where I took root. But at first it was where I had to be, where my husband's work - commercial fishing, demanded that I be. Yet I longed for the mountains, for the rhythm of the seasons and the glorious crescendos of spring and fall. I longed for the familiar.
Seeker Painted bronze and canvas, last revision 1982, 26" x 9" x 32". This figure was originally part of a piece named Shaman. But I knew nothing of shamans. In 1980, I moved to the Oregon coast. It was beautiful. It would some day become the place where I took root. But at first it was where I had to be, where my husband's work - commercial fishing, demanded that I be. Yet I longed for the mountains, for the rhythm of the seasons and the glorious crescendos of spring and fall. I longed for the familiar.
Guide Painted bronze and wood, 1979, 26" x 6" x 20". At some point my figures began to need arms to complete a gesture, to react to their world. I started making figures with flat, fixed bronze arms. The Guide figure had already been cast armless. Because I couldn’t bear to toss it into the reject box, I made it a pair of wooden arms. Once I saw them, they made sense. The puppet-like arms could move, subtly changing the pose, the mood; the wood contrasted with the formality of the bronze. What I had seen as a flaw ended up being a blessing in disguise, an opportunity to choose a new path. Sometimes I have to fail or make a mistake before I will begin looking for a different solution, risk trying something new or consider challenging the premise of what I am trying to do. Sometimes it is an unexpected gift, a thought or an image burbling up through the confusion that sends me off in a new direction. But mostly I just muddle along, trying this and that until it begins to feel true.
Circus Performer Painted bronze, 1979, 12" x 8" x 19". "I can't live where I want to - I can't go where I want to - I can't do what I want to -I can't even say what I want to. Schools and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting what I want to. I decided that I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself. . . .I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way - things that I had no words for." -Georgia O'Keeffe On a whim I painted Circus Performer. Painting bronze felt wrong, a violation of a cardinal rule, and yet the piece felt so right. It was three years before I had the courage to paint sculpture again. Instead, I drew a battered Alexander doll bought from a thrift store. Later, after we moved to the coast, I drew images from my new surroundings, but mostly shells my husband brought home; shells storms ripped from the ocean floor and deposited into his crab pots. I drew long after I lost interest in what I was drawing because I could use color. With each successive drawing, my need, my passion for color grew. I kept the O'Keeffe quote pinned to the bulletin board above my worktable . . . but it was many years before I could read it without guilt. Deep down I was still trying to make real sculpture - sculpture that did not need to be painted to come alive; and I still believed resorting to wooden arms was a cop-out.
Caged with Color Painted bronze and driftwood in found cage, last revision 1982, 10" x 12" x 12". When I was 18, I walked at the base of stacked rows of individual maximum security cells in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Each inmate had made his minuscule space his own with paint and posters. Later, as a wife, I tried to make homes out of places where I was not sure I wanted to be. With enough time, I usually found a way to make them my own. But as an artist, I never seemed to be able to fit the way I made sculpture into my concept of what I had been taught sculpture should be. One day, a classmate brought several pieces by Russell Childers to our graduate seminar and asked, "Is this art?" Childers had been confined to the state mental hospital as a child and released to a group home/ work center as a middle-aged man. He was making sculpture with scrap wood chronicling his childhood before and after being placed in the institution. After much debate, our class decided it was folk art, not fine art. Several years later, the university art museum mounted a show of his work and sold all his pieces within an hour of opening the doors. His work spoke to people. When I was 18, I walked at the base of stacked rows of individual maximum security cells in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Each inmate had made his minuscule space his own with paint and posters. Later, as a wife, I tried to make homes out of places where I was not sure I wanted to be. With enough time, I usually found a way to make them my own. But as an artist, I never seemed to be able to fit the way I made sculpture into my concept of what I had been taught sculpture should be. One day, a classmate brought several pieces by Russell Childers to our graduate seminar and asked, "Is this art?" Childers had been confined to the state mental hospital as a child and released to a group home/ work center as a middle-aged man. He was making sculpture with scrap wood chronicling his childhood before and after being placed in the institution. After much debate, our class decided it was folk art, not fine art. Several years later, the university art museum mounted a show of his work and sold all his pieces within an hour of opening the doors. His work spoke to people.
Study Bronze, 1979, 6" x 4" x 8". Studies into the Solitary was my first sculpture show after grad school. Only three pieces from this show survive as they were originally shown, Study, Guide and Circus Performer. I was honing my ability to form figures that were individual and unique, but I couldn't sort out why one piece seemed true and another felt like an impostor. In a multiple figure piece, a relationship between the figures is inherent and consequently a space in time in which they exist is implied. I wanted my new lone figures to have the same tension and sense of being in the world that the graduate pieces had. I did not want them just to stand on pedestals. Study was an early attempt at creating a stage, a glimmer of the world in which a figure lives.
Woman (1982), and Man (1983), - Painted wood, each 12" x 18" x 38". I first laminated and carved wood as an undergraduate. I made large reclining, winged figures, finely sanded and oiled. Everyone would slide their hands over the swoops and curves of their wings and comment on beauty. But I wanted to speak with my sculpture, not just create beautiful forms. So I carved a figure without wings, then one without wings and covered with rasp marks and chisel gouges to ward off would be strokers. Neither were successful. I went on to other media. In 1982, I returned to wood and created Woman. In 1983, I made Man. They felt right. They said what I wanted to say. People still pat their butts and finger their hands, but that is okay.

My Sculpture

2022 – 2025

2015 – 2020

2004 – 2010

1990 – 2003

Painted bronze and madrona branches, last revision 1982, 13" x 13" x 28". This figure was originally part of a piece named Shaman. But I knew nothing of shamans. In 1980, I moved to the Oregon coast. It was beautiful. It would some day become the place where I took root. But at first it was where I had to be, where my husband's work - commercial fishing, demanded that I be. Yet I longed for the mountains, for the rhythm of the seasons and the glorious crescendos of spring and fall. I longed for the familiar.

1978 – 1989