Stacked rock cairns have always caught my eye. The dynamic tension between balance and gravity is exciting. A couple of years ago we bought a new farm table and I wanted to make a sculpture for it. I stacked some river rock and painted a driftwood stick that I had pulled from the lake. We liked it. I wondered how I could make something like it in glass… The first few had the horizontal element like the stick. I found out that the Inuits make a cairn with an abstract human form called inuksuks, so I describe my pieces with that element as in the inuksuk style. The horizontal pieces pivot on a rod and are removable to ease in moving and shipping. Some of the cairns are suggestive of stacked stones without the horizontal piece. My cairns are blown in sections, attached later, and sandblasted to get the satin finish. I love how the removal of the glossy surface softens the forms and lets the color pop.

I grew up in Paola, KS a small town outside Kansas City. It was a short drive into the country where I always enjoyed viewing the landscape. I love looking at the horizon. In the plains there is a wide horizon line and lots of sky. I find it expansive and very refreshing. The layering of colored glasses in the vessels allows me to build a depth and distance in the imagery. I spend many hours on the interstate driving to art festivals around the country, watching various landscapes roll by. The landscape vessels are approached as paintings in the round.

The arch series began years ago with a trip to Arches National Park in Utah. Looking through sections of mountain that should be solid was intriguing. Once again my mind went to how to present that in glass. I do love negative space. These pieces also gave me a chance to express some of the things I love about the material; fluidity, texture, reflectivity, color, and movement. I want these pieces to look as if they were moving when I made them, because they are really moving when I make them! This is the series where I began to stack pieces. I did it to increase the scale. Looking back, I realize that these were the beginnning of the cairns, but with a different intention.