My interest in doing public scale work goes back to 1977, as evidenced by my first image, “Bag Lady” (weathered steel, approx. 8 feet tall). Over the years my work has focused almost entirely on recycled materials and the stories they carry. I have been strongly involved in the recent trend in adaptive reuse of historic factory buildings for residential and retail space.
My collection of material has grown to over 100 tons of salvaged architectural granite, marble, limestone, as well as stainless steel, bronze, aluminum, steel and cast iron artifacts. For example, I own approximately 20,000 linotype matrices. These intricate molds of highly machined brass (approximately .75 x 1.25 inch, with thickness varying depending on the type being cast) reflect a historic process of creating print that wasthe standard for decades.
My chalices began in 1985 as an attempt to make a series of one hundred objects, all related yet each unique. I chose the chalice image for its loaded history as an icon common to multiple cultures and movements, symbolizing humankind’s eternal quest and striving for perfection and “well-being.” What I thought would be a challenging “obsessive counting series” of table-top chalices has never stopped; the chalices have grown in variation and scale, although all continue to be fabricated from industrial relics.