After many years of working mostly in two dimensions in mixed media, I began a few years ago exploring various ways to let the materials speak for themselves in a more direct way, to step off the paper or canvas and inhabit real space. This happened around the time I moved to New York City, so the richness and density of urban life inevitably have influenced the creative process.

At the same time, the freedom from constraints of gravity and defined shapes keeps leading me back to working with ink, gouache and collaged images on a flat surface. The two modes of working seem to balance and inform each other.

I put together sculpture out of found objects, papier mache, metal pieces, wood, plastic, and clay. I love knowing that many of my materials had a previous life and that they bring echoes of that into whatever they become in my studio. I think there's an aliveness that we respond to in so-called inanimate things and that becoming more aware of that can lead us to take more joy in ourselves and our world.

For me, bringing together disparate materials, making things that come alive in some way, is an extension and intensification of daily human activity. We all go about our lives encountering surprising conjunctions and trying to make sense of them. I like to allow the dynamics of form, color and image to come together and take on their own identity, inviting both the artist and the viewer to explore deeper levels of their own awareness, beyond easy labeling. In working with different materials I try to follow what they want to do, where they want to go, how they can assert their own reality.