The fecundity of an open furrow, the thin slice of earth that forms, and the potential for new growth.

For this exhibition I set out to create an experience of elements that form and inform my work: fire, air, family, soil, water, love, forgiveness, gratitude. Much of what is presented is work I’m in the midst of making; the flurry of engagement with multiplicities, and a feeling of working on the verge is part of it.

The drawings are recent; meditations on the sculptures, which are also quite recent. I set a regular/frequent, not-quite-yet-daily, practice of study, experiencing the three dimensions anew. The rubbings record my physical interaction with 300 year-old logs that form the house on my mother’s ancestral farm in Wisconsin. The sculptures are smoke-fired in small batches, fueled by materials gleaned from my collections - old newspapers, notes, and messages, seeds and branches. I conduct the firings on places meaningful to me and my family.

My ideas are honed in duality and multiplicity, and a deep interest in history and place has long been a part of my artistic practice.

These works are grounded in family and place, loss and attainment, & the cleansing power of fire, which features prominently both here and in my history. Powerful, terrible, formative, creative, fierce. Both in the life of my ancestors, and in my work.

Whatever the media - whether photography, sculpture, mark-making - I rely on metaphor… I am coaxing meaning from material. What I hope comes through in this is the continuity throughout my practice - rootedness & groundedness of my creative practice.

The furrowed brow, deep creases, born in the brows of my ancestors. Especially the women.

I began Lessons of Place as part of the Illinois State Bicentennial and Illinois Humanities “Forgotten Illinois”. I photographed rural sites throughout the state. This led to a commission from Landmarks Illinois to photograph sites throughout the state that were identified as “Endangered Places” by people in the surrounding communities.

I founded Lessons of Place to continue this study, asking questions about our relationship to the concept of place and how it applies in each locales.

“So far, this journey is a kind of pilgrimage; an opportunity to explore my present home state. I’m drawn to these old places by their spirit and craftsmanship; fascinated by the way they’ve worn. I love to stand beside them and ponder what it was like when they were built, what it was like to live the life intended for them, and the forces that were marshaled for their creation. I am drawn by an appreciation of history and affinity for complexities in the passage of time. An acknowledgment of loss, and change and difference.”

In smoke-firings I perform on places selected for their meaningful connection to history and time – including my ancestral lands in the Wisconsin Driftless, I collaborate with fire recording its traces on clay. These pieces are intimate in form and size. Some pieces go through multiple firings to achieve desired results.

Small vessels, “Beelzebub Charms”, are hand-pinched, and began as a process honoring the Solstice when family and friends gathered, placing messages of release, hopes, or dreams for the coming year inside the vessel and fired them in a festive celebration of rebirth.

The name “Beelzebub Charm” is a reclamation of a nickname my father had for me. “Beelzebub” is a moniker for the Devil while “Charm” draws on the positive power of fire to clean and heal. The work references the impact of fire in my own and my family’s history as well as the force of nature’s elements which we only control to some degree.

The sculptures are smoke-fired in small batches, fueled by materials gleaned from my collections and memorabilia - old family obituaries, notes, ephemera, seeds and sticks gathered on the site. I experiment with minerals and materials that lend color and tone. Chance and acceptance of what the process provides are important elements in the making.

These works are grounded in family and place, loss and attainment, & the cleansing power of fire, which features prominently both here and in my history. Powerful, terrible, formative, creative, fierce. Both in the life of my ancestors, and in my work.

The Driftless might be described as the ultimate ‘forgotten’ place. It was formed as a result of being overlooked – bypassed by glaciers of the last ice age. The unique topography, some of it very difficult to traverse, creates a distinctive place with its own particular – some call it cosmic – identity which spans four states, transcending human boundaries. My investigations in the Driftless range in the rural areas of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa.

"My mission as an imagemaker is to better understand and engage the world around me. I photograph to understand, looking deeply to better see. My images are a means to share this deeper vision, asking questions to better know a culture and a way of life; a springboard for conversations, and a bridge between urban and rural life."

In View From My Family Home, I explore landscapes around the homes of four generations of my family members, taking a personal view of a major alteration in America’s culture: the shift from a rural to an urban-based population. This project was engendered by reports that of my parents’ generation, between one-half and one-third of Americans lived on farms, while of my own generation, less than 2% do. My personal view of this particular intersection of nature and culture is this project’s root.

View From My Family Home looks at these landscapes as evidence of a way of life. It considers how we choose to live, the values of place we have inherited, the range of possibilities, and the limitations on choices available to us. I am interested in how we either struggle against or accept those limitations. This work contemplates both the interior and the exterior landscape, and our responsibility of place both public and private.

These images are taken from the inside looking out the windows of 3 generations of my family. They record a way of life; landscapes that members of one American family have both inherited and created. The pictures tell a story of migration from country to city, the loss of the family farm, and a transformation of this country’s culture from rural to urban. They speak to limitations placed on us by geography and culture, and how some accept those limitations while others struggle against them. The transmutation of “home” touches each of us in a deeply personal way. It’s an experience broadly shared in American culture and throughout the world.

“The home is a private place, situated in the public arena.  These images encourage us to consider both the interior and exterior landscape.”

Birds come and go, accepting and providing simple gifts. This installation is an invitation to meditation; a sanctuary for small moments of grace and presence in the landscape. A pause – surprising, subtle. An invitation to tender nurture in an environment we create for ourselves. Exploring equilibrium in loss; I bring light to deep links between individual experience and public expression.

All works are available for purchase. Please contact me for information.

I am also available for commissions.

A daily lunchtime pilgrimage to Lake Michigan shoreline in Chicago Loop during the Polar Vortex lasting nearly the entire month. View these on my blog at ChicagoNow.com/Neighborland Pilgrimage to Lake Michigan.

In “Abecedarium" each image is a talisman of place and time and life, a record of gratitude sought and found – insisted upon – during a time of particular chaos and difficulty in my personal life. Striving to offset the crush of miasma that threatened to engulf me, I devised a system for daily recording of, and meditation on, gratitude. Based in the concept of a child’s ABC Book, I made a photograph each day in contemplation of a specific quality of grace I assigned to each month of the calendar year. While the system itself became markedly complex, the day-to-day observation of gratefulness in all its myriad forms had its desired effect.

“Guided by these moments of grace and beauty, mundane and sublime, I found the strength to persevere.”

Faultlines explores the physical and symbolic space of two cathedrals in Managua, Nicaragua, as seen through the eyes of the photographer, who traveled and worked in Nicaragua from 1984-1990, during the Sandinista Revolution.  The cathedrals are situated historically on either end of the Revolution, and physically along the same earthquake fault zone.  The earthquake, which destroyed the first cathedral, also opened spaces in the country’s social fabric and led to the Revolution.  Construction of the new cathedral, (1992-1995), was financed by a US citizen who also helped fund the “Contra” rebels, a US-trained army which fought against the Revolution.  In the context of history, the new cathedral symbolizes a repudiation of the Revolution’s goals and the intent to reassert old social structures.

“I explore the place of individual experience within a broad social, political and historical sweep.”

FAULTLINES | Managua Diptych video link

These photographs of two public high schools address the way in which our society’s values are reflected in the spaces we create, and in the marks and changes created by use. Schurz Public High School, on Chicago’s north side, was designed at a time when public education was seen as a noble endeavor and a source of strength for the nation. Over the years, use and changing priorities left their mark on this National Historic Landmark. Marathon High School, in rural Wisconsin, is a very different physical structure. Resembling a laboratory, and completed in the early 1960s, the physical space seemed immune to change. These photographs point to the values that led us to create these spaces, while raising questions about how our ideals of education and social relationships have changed.

“The complexities of these places with their layers of historical and social significance resist easy interpretation.”

“Friends in Deed” tells the story of the US­–Nicaragua sister-cities movement, which grew dramatically during the 1980s. These images document the exchanges and interactions of citizens from my home state of Wisconsin and the country of Nicaragua. The two have shared an historic and active link as official sister states since the 1960s. The photographs, results of frequent trips between Wisconsin and Nicaragua, record the many layers of interaction between the United States and Nicaragua, focusing especially on relationships between ordinary citizens and the tone of daily life in Nicaragua during this period in history. These photographs have been published and exhibited widely, and were used to illustrate the Nicaragua section of Rand McNally’s A to Z World Atlas, first published in 1997.

“I was inspired by the personal experiences of everyday US and Nicaraguan citizens working to create a better world.”

These photographs record the activities and the selected-site context of this architectural design competition, sponsored by the Chicago Housing Authority and the National Endowment for the Arts.  A jury selected an architect to design one city block of housing in the ABLA neighborhood on Chicago’s near west side.  encompassing a mix of public housing, affordable housing and market-rate housing for occupants from diverse income groups, and physically indistinguishable across income lines.  The visionary ideals embodied in the competition created a fascinating atmosphere for investigating and documenting an important historical moment. 

“These pictures are witness to the end of an era, and the possibilities indicated by a new one.”

This piece is tribute to, and appreciation of my aunt, a contemplative nun and weaver who lives on Maine’s coast. It expresses my deep gratefulness for her, interwoven with shared expression of love through art and the work of our hands. Cornucopia, or Horn of Plenty represent bounty and thankfulness. My cornucopia were created in an inspired flurry; an expression of my trust in process during a time of considerable personal challenge. They feed from, and result of one another, each on their own terms. Juxtaposed with photographs from Sister Bette’s hermitage, an exquisite prayer shawl she wove for me, and samples of her poetry, they provide a basis of gratitude and grace.

“Sister Bette’s prayer shawls are created in meditation and close attention to the physical world. In meditation, I wrap myself in the production wrought by her prayer. Closely associating these multiple forms of creative endeavor embodies the resonance of pink noise, each with its own voice, humming alongside one another.”