Portfolio of Works

This project started simultaneously with the Will Project.  The first piece was Will's nose.  I had seen a photo of Will and I standing, and my hand was over his nose and it hit me hard.  I wanted to hold that nose again.  So I made his nose and made ti as soft as possible.  When I was sorting out what sort of object this stoneware nose was, I wanted to somehow include a salt block from the field.  Horses of course need salt blocks, and I always look at them, how they are shaped by the rain and by the animals licking them into beautiful curves.  

So it began.  I laid the stoneware nose on the block and began pouring water over it for days and days and days to allow the shape of the nose to gently settle into the block.  In this process, I found comfort.  It became a sort of care ritual for my lost friend.  I could touch the nose, I could pour water gently over it day after day, in a strange soothing reflection of all of the hours spent caring for him over the years.  I made a basin so that this piece or pieces could be interacted with.  I envisioned a gallery filled with noses and little cups and people gently pouring water over.    And made more horse shapes.  

Then the salt began its own action, forming crystals on the basin and on the pieces.  Lowfired clay allows the salt to absorb into the clay body and the salt builds structures on the clay, filling in where the shape of a nostril should be, making large coatings on the sides of every surface absorbent enough to allow it in.  

After losing another loved one this year, I turned again to the salt and the clay and have added vessels to the basin.  These bowls are for holding sorrow.  I continue making them, larger, smaller, to hold that.  

Salt and clay have an interesting relationship, both from the earth itself.  Conceptually, salt and its effects here absolutely fascinate me.  Entropy, life, death, creation, destruction, grief, caregiving, ritual-- it's all in there.

I began this collection after the death of my horse Will.  The day he died, I wanted to just lay down next to him and stay there.  I stayed with him that day and the next and drew the shadows as they crossed his body on the ground.  That summer I continued to be driven to draw the images repeatedly and eventually began large scale drawings, as close to life sized as seemed right for me.  I wanted the feeling of being next to him.  

The project became a multi year project and continues now, with the support of the Maine Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.  

This work is about loss and the expressions of pain and loss in Will and his herdmates, their specific behaviors, expressions, and postures.  While the work has a narrative, I also continue to explore the line between representing this in specific details, while allowing the images to be abstracted.    Viewers may be aware that these are horses, but in some images, the horse only reveals itself over time. The feeling of being surrounded by their bodies and by the emotion is my goal.

This body of work is about my own interrupted perception.  In 2019, I had an accident which resulted in a brain injury.  I remember walking around and seeing and hearing and feeling everything as if I was underwater.  All of my senses were affected-- my perception of the world was completely changed.  Shadows were huge and black and the sun was unbearably bright, the sky garishly blue.  I spent a long time afterward expecting to be the one who was 'wrong' in most situations because I stopped trusting my senses and my brain.  

These pieces are based on that perception.  I learned over time that these ways of seeing and experiencing are as true and valid as my old way of seeing and perceiving and I now trust my own experiences of the world and this is one way I share them.  When your perception changes, it helps you see MORE clearly.  The broken and shadowed, the unseen, the unheard-- all of these things rise up and become present and important.    My hayfields are chaotic broken planes of color, my ballusters are not solid.  SHADOWS are solid but bodies are not.  This infuses all my work.