I moved to Brooklyn in the summer of 1986 to attend graduate school at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. This was my first experience living outside of California, and in an East Coast city. The sculptures made during that time reflect my initial reaction and observations of life in a big, densely populated, urban environment. All the pieces were created out of materials found on the streets and in vacant lots.
Los Barcos is a series about the effect that cold weather, especially snow, has on the pace and mobility of a large metropolis. The color of the boats illustrates the quietness and gray light that envelopes the winter months there, and the simplicity of their shapes speaks about the calmness that comes after a heavy snowfall.
Making my living as a gardener has had an important influence on how I view my work in the landscape, and also, my feelings about the importance of preserving our natural surroundings. I plan to continue in this vein of using discarded and found objects in the creation of my work, and see this as one of the unifying themes throughout.
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