Artist Statement

I started working with clay over thirty years ago. After being evicted from a brownstone on the Upper West Side, where seven other artists and myself had been working and teaching, we co-founded one of New York’s first artist cooperatives---artworkspace----in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, and it was there that I moved from production pottery to sculpture.

Clay speaks to me. From the first time I held some in my hand, clay has been a language for me. Something happens when I begin working on a piece---it becomes alive, has a personality, and speaks back to me. It sometimes takes a while for that magic to take place, but when it does, it never ceases to fill me with wonder.

The fact that I am a woman and a mother plays a very great role in my art. Almost all the work I have done over the last thirty years involves a female figure in some form or another. Much of my work is prompted by what goes on in our world….the individual, collective and incomprehensible acts of inhumanity, aimed too often towards women and children, often overwhelm me. Yet, there are those acts of humanity that give us so much hope. All of those realities/stories play a part in how and why I work.

What I try to bring out is the struggle between what is visible on the surface and the conflict that often exists beneath that smoothness. Many of my pieces explore the way we, both as individuals and as part of a common humanity, communicate--- how we cross the sometimes overwhelming abyss to understanding, wholeness, and acceptance.

I believe art is a critically important language that cannot be separated from its social, human context. It is what helps us scale that abyss.

I hope my pieces speak to you.