about.

Working with materials that are inherently static and conforming, I try to create a bit of unexpected whimsy through animation and buoyancy. Beginning with common copper fittings and various found objects, I employ traditional pipe-fitting techniques to construct a basic armature. From there the process becomes spontaneous and unpredictable. Rather than fabricating from a preconceived plan, the lines are curved and tangled in a manner more akin to “sketching in air”… using tubing the way one would take pencil to paper. Mostly unrehearsed, the lines are gradually edited and refined until they become an interaction.
 
As I work, it’s intriguing to discover pattern emerging from chaos.  Each line, adapts and intermingles with the movement around it until it becomes something fluid and synergistic, like a bird in a flock or a pedestrian on a crowded street … an obstacle, or a glance over the shoulder can suddenly suggest a change of heart or a new direction.  Unpredictable movement.  The ebb and flow of things.  That’s what interests me … and the pieces I create are meant to tell a story that is still unfolding.
 

Often, I work in concert with my brother, Dale, whose hand carved songbirds find their way into many of my pieces. The bird’s fleeting nature seems to create a quiet and uncertain tension when resting in such strangely unnatural circumstances … oddly alone, and sometimes sadly out of place … as though just seeking a bit of refuge.

I guess that may be a lot to ask from a lamp and a few wooden birds.

 
BA, Studio Art,  Greenville University, 1978
Graduate Studies in Fiber, Illinois State University, 1980-81
Self-taught Plumber
 

studio.

My studio sits in the middle of central Illinois cornfields, in what was once a farmhand’s house, chicken coop, home to a flock of carrier pigeons, and lastly a screened summerhouse. The screens have now been replaced with floor to ceiling windows, and with the addition of a warm wood stove and salvaged industrial lighting it is now a pretty cozy refuge.

Much of my work includes the addition of hand carved wooden birds from my brother’s studio, which are usually created to fit the theme of the lamp.  Find his work on Instagram at …

WRINKLED ROCK STUDIOS

collections & exhibitions.

EXHIBITIONS:

“BEST OF OHIO 2015”
Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus OH
Southern Ohio Museum of Art, Portsmouth OH
Mansfield Art Center, Mansfield OH

cometogetherspace, Bloomington IL

COLLECTIONS:

St. Charles IL / Chicago IL / Heyworth IL / Bloomington IL / Galena IL / Rochester MN / Merlin OR / Ypsilanti MI / N Jackson OH / Bainbridge OH