This body of work is about my faith and hope in the animate space within all living things, embodying that invisible and enigmatic life force – and the sacred importance of that particular form for holding that living essence, protecting it and carrying it forward into the next generation or species.  I am fascinated by the constant evolution of forms across geologic time, always in the process of change – some running their course and going extinct and others newly created to keep this forward passage of life in continual motion.

Vertical Forms: Using the language of simple geometric shapes, these tall pieces are an attempt to reach a level of human existence apart from the typical distinctions of gender, culture, economic system, politics, gesture and emotion. The forms were conceived almost as fragments or slices that remain after the removal and paring away of outer layers. What is common to all of humanity once outer layers are removed and an inner core revealed?

Horizontal Forms: The botanical term “pericarp” is a beautiful metaphor for the role played in evolution by humans (and by all life forms), and applies to all the works of this series, but particularly to works including Between, Link, Pericarp, Trace and Continuation: A pericarp is a disposable form (or “seed vessel”) that protects the seed of the next generation – being neither the parent nor the next life form itself, but guarding the seed in its journey to germination, and being eventually discarded like all used-up life forms.

I view each life form (particularly that of humanity) in this way.  In the course of geologic time, I believe we are individually and collectively disposable forms, yet imbued with the sacredness of life.  We are all part of a lineage of continuity, a linkage to other life forms and to all life across all time – past into the future.  It is in this context that I reflect on the fate and future extinction of the human form, face our role as accelerant to evolutionary processes, and attempt to make peace with what troubles me about the human impact on the planet. It is strangely calming to contemplate how life will continue to dwell within various evolving forms long into the future, with or without the survival of humans.