“And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” ~Kahlil Gibran

I had a dream on a lawn in Rome. I was 17. I dreamt of statues on pedestals. That was my beginning into this body of work. An invitation to dive deep. Raised in a religious home, I was steeped in what I could not see. Read and sang about virtue and God. I pursued a BFA in ceramics at WMU. Drawing and painting from a model soon infiltrated my pottery with figures. These figures became teachers as I learned of Medieval sculptures and pillars on and in cathedrals, the illiterate’s instructions. This body of work and all my work draws from teachings that connect humans to spirit. The viewer interprets figures that depict allegory and symbolism. In our contemporary busy lives, I hope my ideas inspire others to hold dear the paradoxes of beauty and rage in living. After forming these figures in clay, their final passage is through fire; woodfire and gas dresses the sculptures in ash and glaze. Why is Dante forced to pass through the wall of flames? Dante hopes to see God, but before that, he hopes to see Beatrice. He cannot behold her until and unless he first walks through the wall of flame, a baptism by fire that will purify his heart. He has to mortify the flesh before he can live in the spirit. Purgatorio XXVII