Wheel

WHEEL is an 8" x 14" painting/assemblage in a styrofoam box -- actually, the bottom portion of the box that formed the base for Open Doors. It consists of a Wheel of Fortune in front of a figure taken from the visual tradition of alchemy -- a man with the head of the sun, stepping through the spheres into the world of time and juggling planets in his hands.
When we were growing up, we always ended up with Wheels or Wheeler-Dealer as nicknames (my brothers bore the brunt of that). This piece takes the last name to its mythological outer limit! It also juxtaposes blind fate and a figure which seems to have mastered it -- and truly, fate only goes so far in defining what happens to you, for good or ill. You also happen to it!

Self-Portrait

SELF-PORTRAIT is an 8" x 9" painting/assemblage on a styrofoam packing piece. Contained in the profile self-portrait are partial portraits of my parents. The glasses that show up from time to time in my work all came from a time when I worked in a human services agency located down the street from a rough bar in Cambridge's Central Square. On Monday mornings I would come in to work and harvest the broken glasses from the street in front of the bar!
The large open eye is the interior eye, of course, the one that doesn't suffer from myopia or need bifocals! Intuition, the ability to see what is really going on, was something I was working on when I did this piece. You can't see it on the photo, but there is a little ledge under the eye and on it is pasted the rather mysterious quote from Scripture, "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

Solar and Lunar Aspects

SOLAR AND LUNAR ASPECTS
This is the piece of work I always turn to when I have to introduce myself. It is a 14" x 18" painting/assemblage on two joined styrofoam packing cases. It brings together the studious, responsible, orderly me with a wilder side and gives them a certain balance. At least, I like to hope so!

So why a blog? To make myself get back to work. To make myself get my work out into the public eye. It's so personal, I shy away from that, but it's time. My goal is to post several pieces a week here, starting with older work I already have on hand. As of December 1, I am renting a studio in downtown Oil City's National Transit Art Center to use as work and exhibition space. The 12 pieces that are now on display at Clarion University Venango campus will come home to my new studio instead of to my living room. Exciting! Scary. The hermit is finally going public.