My sculpture explores a place where sensuality and stone meet. . .
Stone with its purity, density, flaws, brittle fragility, strength. Me with my hands, my files, chisels, hammers, electric tools pneumatic tools, the noise, dust, my impatience, frustration, strength, persistence; and an idea coming in and out of focus as we go, leading to something deeply known, unfolding, surprising to the very end.
I started carving stone 16 years ago in a class at the Elizabeth Ney Museum in Austin, Texas. My time spent as a young man doing construction work, and it's attendant destruction work, gave me the sense that I had an affinity for stone and knowing where and how hard to hit it to get the desired effect. So after waiting 50 years, I acted on my hunch and found out I was right - I did have an affinity for stone. Along the way I wrote poems and read them mostly to other poets in bars and other venues all over Austin; played percussion music and recited poems for dance performances in Austin, around the US, and in Mexico, Canada, and Europe. For money I worked at the aforementioned construction work, as a graphic designer, and as a State of Texas bureaucrat. I’m now retired and carving stone whenever I can.