CONSCIOUSNESS
Beyond Illusions (2001) — Full View/Right Side, 92(h) x 72(w) x 180(d) — Airbrushed and glazed earthenware, gypsum cement, wood, stainless steel, backlit duratrans. Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida
BEYOND ILLUSIONS
Polished steel gates mark the entry to a threshold the viewer inhabits physically — moving between two platforms, two states, two figures: a life-size ceramic figure in vibrant green and red polychromy embodying the fullness of living, and a shrouded apparition standing before an empty bench, its surface holding a lighted photographic transparency as a luminous site of memory. At the bench’s edge, shrouded feet rise on tiptoe in a suspended gesture of ascent, reaching toward something beyond resolution. Rather than narrating death as an ending, the installation frames passage as something the body must move through — a liminal space where memory, transcendence, and the unknown are felt rather than explained.
Guardian (1997) — Full View, 92(h) x 182(w) x 92(d) — Airbrushed and glazed earthenware, steel, aluminum, plexiglass, wood. Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, Florida
GUARDIAN
A life-scale figure stands on a stainless steel bridge above a stainless steel pond, its concentric rings cut with the words what you think about expands — a meditation on the power of directed awareness. Surrounding her in the rotunda gallery space, airbrushed tile paintings of women’s faces mount on plexiglass and float from the walls, each work — single, diptych, or triptych — bearing a quote from a meditation master. The installation creates a collective of inner wisdom encircling a solitary figure in quiet reflection; consciousness, directed with intention, shapes the world we inhabit and the self we become.
Visionary (1995) — Full View/Back, 108(h) x 300(w) x 420(d) — Glazed earthenware, colored gypsum cement, steel, laminated wood. Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida
VISIONARY
In a vast immersive space, three life-scale figures navigate stainless steel structures that trace in linear outline the essential forms of a spiritual journey — a mirror, a boat, and a sail. The polychromed figure’s coloration is drawn from a hand-colored black and white photograph; her dress bears the hypnagogic patterns seen behind closed eyes in darkness — the threshold between waking and sleep, consciousness and the unknown. She stands before the mirror and sees her life transform; her spirit self rises to stand atop the boat as linear waves move beneath her. A twelve foot sail holds airbrushed tile portraits of her face in a progression from realism to graphic abstraction — thought dissolving, the self expanding — while on the reverse, locks and keys are visible through the open linear structure, both faces of each tile readable simultaneously as the viewer moves through the space. At the sail’s peak the words: sail across the tumultuous waters of life to the safe shores of God. The installation frames spiritual transformation not as a single moment of revelation but as an ongoing passage — what must be unlocked, walked through, and lived inside.
Faith (1985) — Full View/Side, 108(h) x 72(w) x 156(d) — Colored porcelain, gypsum, fabric, wood, monofilament. University of Florida University Gallery, Gainesville, Florida. (Photo documentation by Hobart Swiggett)
Three life-scale spirit forms in yellow ochre — their full length skirts and tailored blouses sewn to drape and reveal the body without reference to time or culture — occupy opposite sides of a wooden space frame whose structure creates a mirror-like optical illusion, the boundary between presence and reflection made uncertain. On one side a seated figure balances on nothing, no chair beneath her, held by faith alone; behind her an armless standing figure reaches forward, her gesture of near-touch drawn from the artist’s grandmother in her wedding portrait. Across the space frame a third figure stands and offers — her hands at the edge of a floating track, pushing a ceremonially decorated porcelain bowl mounted on roller skate wheels toward the two figures opposite. The bowl carries faith across the divide. In a fractured world, the installation asks us to remember that faith in humanity begins close — in the people we know, in the touch almost given, in what we are willing to send across the distance.
