HOW I WORK
Although obsessed with objects and their making, photography became my chosen medium for both my art and my livelihood. As a working photographer, I balanced “decisive moment” street assignments with slower studio production. Hand held camera photo journalism kept me physically astute while large format fine art documentation refined my patience and skills.
For art making, tabletop was a practical solution to focus on the beloved subject of hand tools in my tiny East Village apartment.
HARDWARE (1988-95)
Large format black and white portraits of individual dressed hand tools styled in a glamorized Hollywood tradition, these were originally intended to exhibit as photos only with their subjects hidden away.
Once I secured a larger studio space in Tribeca, more ambitious projects were possible.
MTA JEWELS (on view at 14th Street since 1993)
This commissioned public art work features five collections of track workers’ railway tools, painted gold and set in jewel box style arrangements in the tradition of Tiffany window dressing. Each image was fabricated with silk screened enamel on metal panels for durability.
DETAILS BELOW 24TH STREET (2002-2013)
All photography, this project marks a significant shift in vision — in direct response to 9/11. My attention was redirected outdoors. Seeking to understand and reclaim my neighborhood through its defining architecture, I documented landmarks of a very personal landscape — shooting from street level, hand held with film and printing digitally in black and white.
PERSISTENT SOFT BODIES (2010 and continuing)
Object and material driven, these soft flexible works come out of an overwhelming sense of global crisis due to human mismanagement and the resulting climate catastrophe that escapes no one. Though I worried about plastics as a teenager and dutifully recycled and conserved, I had yet to incorporate this misunderstood material into my art with any focus. Today, salvaged household plastics are the core of these new constructions — imaginary jellyfish forms that hang and drape in space, moving with the air currants mimicking sea water undulations.