“My work method stems from an interest in the complex structure of bamboo and its unlimited potential as an art material. Bamboo is a remarkably versatile material. It can be cut, layered, glued, and sanded like wood, or it can be split, bent, and woven, incorporating basketry techniques. Bamboo’s I gather my bamboo from backyards, gardens, and farms around Oregon. After gathering, the bamboo is dried for at least six months to remove moisture, then prepared with heat, which removes an oily starch, making the bamboo unattractive to insects and hardening it. After preparing the bamboo, the possibilities are limitless. When I work I develop a system for creating a structure. Some systems, like stacking split bamboo pieces into progressively smaller rows. I consider each of these systems to be like a sentence in a paragraph that tells a story-a part of my visual vocabulary. Glass is a wonderfully amorphous material. Combined with the bamboo it captures light, accenting the fine tips of the bamboo. It can add to a narrative, creating a light and translucence the bamboo cannot. I use it in the same manner I do bamboo, it is a part of the visual vocabulary. While growing up in New Mexico I became aware of and inspired by the adobe brick architecture, the multitude of patterns in the local basketry and pottery, the sparse and delicate landscape, and the many myths I have read over the years. The impetus for my work comes partly from a collection of the forms, textures, materials, and methods of other cultures, past and present. It also comes from an interest in forms in nature, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic, and patterns contained within the plant and animal world. 

Oddments: “Usually, with a gallery show, I configure a set of parameters: theme, subject, size, medium, number of works, style, etc.. Usually, I begin a series with a finished product in mind; a cohesive, defined, confined body of work. This past year, with everything else confining, constricting, troubling & weighing on me (& … pretty much everyone else in the world), I just couldn’t restrict, I didn’t want to plan, or to follow more rules. What you see is what naturally bubbled up. Some are revisitations, some are new ground. Some are paintings that had been waiting - oh so patiently - to be complete. The source images are from life, my own photos, the internet, old magazines, ephemera … They are all singular portraits of a kind: people, places, things, spaces & moments. What does Mr. Mason have to do with a chrysanthemum? I don’t know, why don’t you tell me? … or maybe I do know. In any case, I think that they all are a part of me, a part of us; Always different, always the same. I usually give the body of work a title. I came up with quite a few over the course of this past year. Some that came close were: Panta Rhei (all is in flux) , All that Arises, Passes, Coming & Going, Beginnings & Endings, Memento Vivere, Oddments, Picture Poems … maybe you have an even better title?”