“I want my family and everyone else to remember me for two things – that I loved everyone unconditionally and that I remained faithful to my God, my Savior, my wife and my family.

It was said in the middle ages “music tunes the soul for virtues.” What of art? Does it sensitize the soul to see the work of the Creator? My art is always connected to my personal belief that everything I do should bring glory to the Father. It seems to me that we have removed the Spirit so far from our lives and churches in our culture that we can no longer receive Christ’s revelation – His awesome promises, abundant life or vision. We have adopted a ceramic lawn frog mentality about life. Post-modernism seems to me to be the end result when artists choose to ignore any moral law and replace it with the law of self. In the absence of moral law, chaos fills the void and rebellion becomes the excuse for lack of serious conversation. Hyper-intellectualism replaces beauty and technique becomes meaningless. In this senseless post-modern, post-Christian world that we live in, the ceramic lawn frog takes on more meaning than the sun shining in a meadow.

All too often we cannot see beauty because we have been blinded by sin. We see beauty in others (whether suffering or not) when we have taught ourselves to see Christ in them. We see beauty in nature when our inborn transcendent desire sees God exhibited in it. Occasionally, as in the case of art, we are able to make something that transcends ourselves and somehow exhibits something of Christ in us. As part of the created order, all human beings reflect the nature of the Creator in some fashion; just as in a work of art something of the artist is often present. My prayer is that my art transcends me and helps others see Christ and their culture more clearly.

These works are about the sense of loss and confusion I have when I consider culture and my place in it. Where the influence of the Holy Spirit on the intellect fails, productivity can likewise produce only failure. Poverty in spirit cannot produce a great wealth of beauty, because God is Beauty personified. The product of our time seems to be a kind of paradox, a struggle between the natural and the artificial. An appreciation for the beauty of nature, yet a denial of the One Who created it. Society worships nature and technology at the same time, but ironically, a technocratic philosophical model determines how we should think about each. Just as strangely, I often do not understand what a piece of technology will do, yet I find myself appreciating it anyhow.

This work references the relationship between man and the natural world, man and technology, man and contemporary society. The human condition evidenced by bits and pieces of the flotsam of our contemporary user-based society, taken from their original purpose and context to become meaningless components of a dead or dying culture. Real, imaginary and cast objects remind the viewer of things familiar, ordinary, but not identifiable. The work becomes the museum piece, like the stone tablets and wall sculpture from long-dead civilizations found in the British Museum.

I invite viewers to look at each work almost as voyeurs, peering into a present–past that eludes any kind of classification; a confusing miasma of multi-culturally diverse elements intended to force us to consider the fate of culture, the environment, technology, faith and society at large. They appear as chunks of material that scream of human industriousness - but now impotent, sterile and useless.What will they find when they dig up our leavings? If change does not come – and soon – I fear we will leave behind a peculiar legacy, a memento mori (remembrance of death) that leaves behind no hope for the future. I sometimes believe my purpose as an artist to be not unlike that of the prophets. I want you to consider the space between the art and the viewer.

By placing the polar opposites of mechano-technological and organic forms in juxtaposition, I hope to stimulate conversation about the fragility of human existence, our reliance upon forces outside of ourselves, and the type of archeological evidence we are leaving behind as a culture. The symbology found in this body of work is intentionally vague, forms taken from the things that surround us every day.  Referential, but not recognizable, intended to convey meaning through an emotional response connected to a deeper and often unconscious perception of our environment. The color in this work is intended to convey the sense of age that one sees and feels when viewing the bones of dinosaurs and objects from archeological digs. I still remember as a little boy seeing the T-rex in the Smithsonian and appreciating the color and texture of the bones. There is beauty here, too. It is interesting to consider how God through natural forces crafts the shapes and colors of things long gone. The work is purposefully mixed media, including things that we see everyday pressed into, through and attached to the clay substrate.  These are referencing forms often found by archeologists, like the extinct arthropods found between layers of rock. Often, all that is left behind is the impression of the physical substance of the object.  Bits and pieces of the flotsam of history. Even embedded within the clay used to make these works, lies the remains of Gods' earthen processes. There are also many references to human form and its structures.

Poems are also a part of this series and were written in large part the result of my experience with the death of my father (and others close to me), caused by cancer (His death was the result of multiple myeloma – a severe form of bone cancer caused by dangerous chemical substances found in our contemporary home and work environments). It is my desire that you look, feel and consider all that you see here and allow those thoughts to influence your life.  The world we live in is such an interesting, awe-inspiring and beautiful place. What will you leave behind?

To communicate the truths that God places so clearly on my heart. My hope is that you will see something in my art that will cause you to think.”