Islamic tile work                         Japanese Raku tea bowl

 The contrast between classical and romantic beauty is not just a division between art and science. Between the artistic traditions of various cultures, there are often extreme contrasts between classical and romantic ideas of beauty. In Islamic art for example, geometry dominates. Geometry is eternal and absolute. It is logical, rational and predictable. It can be used to lay out the largest building and city plans, and to pattern the finest jewelry. Moslems prefer geometry for religious reasons. Whereas paintings of landscapes and people draw one's attention to worldly things, geometry transcends the world and draws attention to eternal ideas. In contrast, a Raku tea bowl from Japan might at first seem ugly and misshapen. It lacks perfect symmetry; it's surface is rough and irregular, the patterns made by the flames and ashes in the firing are unpredictable. Every bowl is like a unique product of nature and is given an individual name as if it was a living thing. Turning a bowl over in one's hand, one can see in it an expression of the complexities of life ­ all of its emotions, desires, regrets and dreams. In contrast to the absolute transcendent qualities of Islamic geometry, the Raku tea bowl is personal, introspective and expresses the transitory nature of life lived in this world.

 As a practicing artist, I do not accept that one of these artistic traditions has some kind of inherent superiority over the other. Each is full of depth and meaning which I would like to bring to my own work. To do this I have generated two main bodies of work ­ my "mandala" series, and what I refer to as my "pattern and space" series.

 With my mandala series I usually start with some classical, sacred geometry derived from architectural history ­ most commonly the geometry used in the ground plans of ancient Hindu temples combined with other classical motifs such as the squaring of the circle or a square root of two division of a square. With this rational linear structure as a point of departure, I then begin working more intuitively, more spontaneously, layering colors and line work in an expressionistic manner. Often the secondary phase involves repeatedly building up and scraping down layers of oil pastel as I try to find the right image. Many of the mandalas get worked and reworked repeatedly over the years until they seem to take on a life of their own. It seldom makes sense to put a date on them, as some have been evolving for more than ten years.

 The "pattern and space" series involves a different set of motifs and a different way of working. This series relies on directly juxtaposing an organic level of order or pattern against a geometric level of order or pattern. This usually involves dividing up the page with a set of proportionally related windows and layering within the spaces, thus creating fluid patterns of spheres or occasionally more irregular organic shapes together with more rigid geometric patterns of grids, diamonds or rectangles. I have tried to create a personal vocabulary of such proportions, patterns and shapes so that when I sit down at the drawing table I can call upon them spontaneously much as an improvisational musician might perform. After the design has been laid out, it then involves hours of fairly laborious coloring to bring out the image. The greatest advantage of this series is also its greatest disadvantage. Like recording improvisational music, corrections can't be made. When I'm at my best, the images can be outstanding, but I have also spent hundreds of hours on images that just don't measure up. I have reworked some of these in oil pastel with some success but generally I'm forced to set them aside and try again. In recent years I have tried translating the pattern and space series from drawings to paintings. This allows for more flexibility in the development of the image, but can't capture the same graphic clarity that the best drawings demonstrate.

 In recent years I've become preoccupied with the relationship of art and money. What is the value of art and how is it measured? I am convinced that art has intrinsic value that goes right to the heart of what it means to be human but how can that value be translated into enough money to allow an artist to keep working? What is worse, an artist must try to make that value for money exchange with people whose primary interest in art is as an ornament to their otherwise materialistic lives. This frustration with the lack of an acceptable exchange rate between intrinsic and commodity value eventually vented itself by my painting directly on uncirculated one dollar bills. Now people don't question the price of my art; they question the price of my money. Actually, more people seem concerned about my defacing currency than any issues of value I may be trying to raise. Despite the fact that it is speech rather than currency that is constitutionally protected, most people are more concerned with the material integrity of the note rather than the intrinsic value of a work of art.

 Questions concerning the value of art and artifacts have engaged me in other ways. How can I deal with materials I can't put a price on? I have knick knacks from my childhood, things once owned by friends and family members that have died, and materials collected while traveling to foreign countries. Most of these things are full of memories and associations, but would mean nothing to someone else ­ a dried rose from a prom, tree seeds from the Grove of the Patriarchs, a fleck of stone from the temple mount, beads given to me by a friend just before her death, embroidery thread from my grandmother's sewing basket. Some of these things are full of joy, others full or regret. Is it possible or appropriate to use these things in works of art? It is generally supposed that art should communicate, but the meanings and associations of some of these things are so personal that they will never be revealed.

 What to do with these artifacts is an important question to me. Do I leave them on the shelf, in drawers or boxes, or try something more formal? I like the idea of shrines and reliquaries. When a culture decides something is important, it is usually contained and venerated with great respect in some sort of specially prepared container. I have tried to approach some of my own artifacts in the same spirit. Eventually I would like to work with materials that are not simply of personal importance, but have a larger cultural significance. I have been building boxes of windows taken from houses lived in by the Hanford workers who produced the plutonium used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. I would like to place inside one of these boxes something from Nagasaki affected by that bomb - perhaps just a stone whose surface was exposed to the blast. I am also interested in other cross-cultural connections. Every twenty years when the Grand Shrines of Ise, Japan are rebuilt, materials from the old buildings are given to other shrines around the country to be used when making repairs. I am hoping that some day I might be able to get something from Ise shrine to use in the construction of one of my own reliquary boxes.

 * Index

 * Resume ( 1997 ).

 * Nuclear Reliquary project proposal ( 1996 )

 * Philosophical Statement ( 1995 )

 * Arto-biography ( 1994 )

 * Mythologizing Life essay ( 1994 )

 * Common Currency (1996)

 * Virtual Art Gallery ( under construction )