Spiritus Naturalis

The interplay of stillness and movement is at the core of my love of sculpting. I return again and again to the joy of creating still objects radiating aliveness and delight in being.

The current series, Spiritus Naturalis, explores the dynamic convergence of landscape and animate forms. Each nature spirit is both the landscape it inhabits and its gestural way in it.

The series is inspired by the sensual forms of the local madrona trees. I rearrange, carve, and joint these branches, then respond to their arranged forms with copper tendrils coursing among them. Last, I gently apply a skin of my handmade flax fiber paper in a clear medium. In this colorful banding, I work with sequence, rhythm and flow, inviting the eyes and spirit along the serpentine curves.

These are recent works, some of which are available. Inquiries can be made here.

River Wisp

This being stands at the headwaters, casting waves across the land.

Cool, watery elements flow through vegetative greens and warm earth hues. A symphony of undulations evoke the motions of currents, waves and eddies.

28" high

Fiddlehead Sough Usher

Stop in the woods on a windy day, become still inside, and the sough—the rushing sound of wind blowing through trees—becomes a chaotic symphony. This nature spirit guides the sough, makes music of it whether or not anyone is there to listen.

The paper skin of the trunk has earthier coloration, while the branches flowing down and away have a feeling of wind and sky. The tendrils—the sound element—each have a unique, punctuated and rhythmic color stream.

5' high x 3' wide

Tailwind Medusa

Tailwind Medusa seems blown from behind across a dry landscape. Desert colors are reflected on its legs and torso, while its upper reaches inhabit sky with cyans and teals, cloudy whites and dashes of sunny yellows.

The pulsing tendrils are brightly warm with flecks of sky.

54" high

Nomad Wavemaker

This darling land spirit plies the currents of winds and waters, shaping waves of destruction and delight, releasing them in its colorful stride.

44" high

Thunderhead Proboscelope

With its prominent proboscis, antlers, summery array of colors, stormy upper reaches and a bolt of energy trailing earthward, it could only be a quite rare Thunderhead Proboscelope.

47” high x 27” wide

Garden Seed Usher

At 6 feet, Garden Seed Usher is the tallest of the floor pieces yet in the Spiritus Naturalis series.

It stands between earth and sky, conjuring and guiding seeds into the ground. Its upper reaches are cool blues and whites with flecks of yellow sun.

The lower middle is a whirl of seeds of increasing size making their way earthward. The colors overall suggest a wild, vivid garden already in bloom. Or perhaps the garden to be?

It roots are brown tones, immersed in earth, completing the spectrum from sky to earth.

Shoulder Season:
Vernal Embrace

Here in the Pacific Northwest, winter melds with spring, provides months of betweenness we call shoulder season.

In this piece, the embracing seasons are rooted in muted earth. Winter's cool blues, stormy white-speckled blacks, and cloudy black- and blue-speckled whites greet Spring's vibrant floral array.

Each has a tendril extending its own coloration, blending with the other season as they intermingle. Winter's cold is warmed as it meets spring. Spring's warm inclination cools as it blends with Winter's chill.

24" high x 29" wide

Intertidal Wisp

I love the childlike wonder of looking up at forms soaring aloft. Sometimes they’re sky beings, but this hanging piece courses above as if in a watery, intertidal zone.

Its colors reflect vibrant sea life, strands of kelp and cool currents streaming by.

43” long x 20” high

Tidepool Waven

A crustaceous form with the dazzling color array of intertidal creatures at large and the cool, serpentine flow of waves coursing through.

38" long x 29.5" high

Cloud Usher

While turning the compost pile, I stood holding the pitch fork upright. Looking through the tines to the sky beyond, I imagined a nature spirit flying about, guiding clouds to where they ought to be.

The intermingled earthier tones of the lower end suggest a creature related to land, while the cooler airiness of the upper resides in sky.

8.2' high

Leafipedes

When I go deeply enough into a series, it often ends up spawning sub-series. And so it is that the Leafipedes have formed a family of their own within the Spiritus Naturalis series. These have in common a leaf-shaped landscape held aloft on numerous legs.

Seaside Walkabout
Leafipede

The cedar floating leaf top with its cool, speckled fiber surface suggests shallow water lapping up on a shore. The underside is a warmer sand tone, like a beach below the tide.

The madrona branch legs with their bulbous tops remind me of bull whip kelp. The bands of color shift cooler, as if they’re descending into the depths. A brass mesh veil hangs below, like a keel sailing through kelp.

60" long, 36" high.

Summer Storm Leafelope

Ok, not exactly a Leafipede, but with its stance and antler, a Leafelope it is!

Earthy tones at its feet shift into greens and warm summer colors, and upward into cooler greeens and blues. The sky plane features collages of eye-shaped clouds. The antler has stormy cloud tones segueing into yellow-speckled bbolts of lightning.

50" high x 45" wide

Tide Strider Leafipede

The gently undulating cedar leaf top with its cool, speckled fiber surface suggests water lapping up on a shore. The underside is sand-toned, like a beach below the tide.

It wades through blue-green shallows, with bright coral, fish and seaweed tones on its upper legs. A pair of translucent mesh forms glide between.

57" long x 36" high

Meandering Stream Leafipede

This smaller Leafipede wanders the countryside, its legs morphed into stepping stones across its varied blue surface.

The watery cools percolate down into bright and warm earther tones toward the base.

31" high x 41" wide