BODY SERIES

Private and public collections
2000 - 2009

Related articles:
Artweek 2000
Boise Art Museum Exhibition Catalog 2004
Art in America 2005
Sculpture 2004
Sculpture 2010
Boise Weekly 2004

Following a decade-long interest in the human form, these sculptures are inspired by a range of human body parts and functions—from breathing to the juxtaposition of multiple superficial characteristics of lips and teeth. The project Preserve involved casting the lips of 400 people over a one-year period. Weekly social gatherings framed the casting sessions and many family groups are represented within the sculpture with people ranging in age from 9 months old to late eighties. Men with facial hair were separated from their family groups and relegated to a bearded forest together. The sculpture was cast in concrete as well as translucent rubber. The rubber casting was carried like a heavy blanket and located in a variety of environments including the ocean and at temperatures below -20 degrees. An earlier, smaller variation of Preserve was called Lips. It was created from a smaller group of castings in 2002. Jaw is a meditation on Dante’s Inferno. Rind and Swell are sculptures also related to Shoal (in the Elephant Bed Series). The Duratrans x-ray imagery and many other works incorporating cast iron were made during a residency at the Kohler Foundry in Wisconsin. Initially exhibited within solo exhibitions at Davidson Galleries in Seattle, WA, all of these works are in private collections except Pared Cicatrice, which is in the collection of the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI.