Words.

January 9, 2025


Thanks for visiting and I hope this moment finds you well. I've decided to temporarily remove most of my work from view. If there was something you've viewed before, that you would like to see again, please contact me. As per usual, I am working on multiple and diverse projects simultaneously.

The methods and materials of printmaking are my prime medium for visual communication. I find that the processes of etching, lithography, relief, collagraph, screenprint and monotype offer a complex way of thinking through content. Layers are not mere ideas, they are physical considerations. Color isn't something applied as embellishment. It becomes part of a foundational decision-making. Sometimes this can be spontaneous, other times it must be carefully considered. I describe my work as visually diverse. Sometimes it manifests in traditional two dimensional formats, other times it occupies space in ethereal ways.

As I prepare for the spring semester at Boise State University, where I am a professor of Art, it's a time to reflect on the previous semester, working to improve and build upon successes. Teaching keeps me on my toes.

The work featured in the Ground folder of the site is a small portion of a much larger body of work. I am actively looking for the perfect venue/gallery/museum space to exhibit the project, Ground.

Ground. combines individual resiliency practices with archery, etching, collage and drawing. Based in neuroscience research, grounding is a physical practice that helps balance the nervous system while fostering individual resilience. This exhibition features hundreds of concentric circles, in varied scales that were drawn, constructed or etched over a five year period of time. The work commenced in early March 2020 and is ongoing.

I came to archery out of curiosity in 2018, following an intuitive impulse. Drawing the first targets commenced in March 2020, while I was an artist in residence at Playa Center for Art and Ecology. Covid-19 was formally declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization while in residence. In a time of external and internal turmoil, the drawing, etching, construction and printing of these concentric circles helped to ground and moor me in an otherwise chaotic and difficult period. This work is as much about resilience, persistence and mental health as it is about archery, etching and drawing.

Ground. features several comprehensive projects, including a series of 28 Olympic archery target etchings hand-printed on Tyvek. Created from a single copper plate that transformed over a two year period, they are printed in color on both sides. Archery as a practice is technical, much like etching. While safety and rigor are akin to both, the methodical process of each and unlikely outcomes become points of meditation and contemplation. The 28 targets will be shot in the Idaho Desert over the course of a lunar month. The shot targets emanate light through the arrow piercings. Unframed and hung slightly away from the wall, the vibrant color from the back of the etchings glow around each target. Sometimes bold but more often subtle and meditative, the work seeks to generate focus and inner peace.

Color in the exhibition is prominent and diverse. The source of the color varies, from internal emotional states, to varied bodies of water I’ve swam in the past four years, including; Quinn’s Pond, the Adriatic Sea, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and others. More will follow as the film I am creating with the support of the Idaho Film Collection is created.

As I close, I invite you to take a moment to pause. Take a long slow deep breath in. Feel your body against your seat, your feet on the ground or even the warmth in your belly. Slowly exhale and breath again. This is a resilience pause. Thanks for looking at my website.

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