The art of what's not there

When most people look at a mobile, they see the sail, the shape at the end of the rod. I call this a sail, because it catches the movement of air that powers the mobile. But it's the rods on which I concentrate as I build. The mobile is a line drawing in space, a line drawing that is constantly changing. Even when I make a mobile with colorful, whimsical sails on which the viewer's eye focuses, it is the lines created by the lengths and angles of the rods that really determines whether the piece will have the staying power I strive for in my work.

There's a way in which a good mobile tricks the human eye. If you focus on the lines of the rods and find them pleasing, what you may not realize is that you are probably reacting to the spaces between the rods as much, or more than, the lines of the rods themselves. The rods are defining shapes, or volumes, in the spaces between each other. As the rods move and their relationships shift, your brain, at some level, is perceiving these shifting shapes. If there is no sail at the end of the rods, one's brain will see the lines of the rods as extending further out through space. This is the case with my hammered metal mobiles, and is specially true of the ones in the arrow series. With those, the arrows pointing off into space reinforce that tendency to perceive the lines continuing beyond their ends.

Influences

I'm aware of two influences from my childhood that are reflected in my work. The first is that, as a toddler, I was a very confident tree climber. I was drawn to climb up 15 to 20 feet to the tops of young trees. I was less confident about getting down than going up. As I got bigger, I climbed bigger trees. And I climbed higher. What I remember more than the climbing was hugging the highest branches, and swaying with the trees as the wind blew through them. I remember the exhilaration I felt being inside those massive, shifting sculptural live forms. When I build a mobile, I am recreating that experience for myself. With rods for branches and sails for leaves, I release my creations to move like trees in the wind.

The second influence was from my growing up in Panama. After spending the first eight years of my life on Long Island, my father moved us to Panama, where he had been born. I wasn't so aware of it then, but the diversity and beauty of the tropical vegetation had a large impact on me. In New York, the world around me had mostly been defined by architecture, man-made forms. In Panama, I spent most weekends at my family's country place, far from the city, and so plants, not architecture, dominate my visual memory of the second eight years of my life. The older I get, the more plants I keep in my home. And they show up in my work. Some grow in a very orderly, predictable fashion, while others are unruly and full of subtle surprises.

How I became an artist

My first artistic endeavor was made on a whim and ended up being sold through a Georgetown craft gallery in Washington, D.C. I had dropped out of college for a while, and was living in an efficiency apartment near the State Department. I had wanted a mobile for quite a while. Since I couldn't afford to buy one, I decided to make my own. I bought some tear-shaped and test-tube-shaped glass pendants filled with colored water, some baling wire and fishing line, and got to work one evening. I didn't care for the result of a few hours' labor. But, it was late, and I was tired, so I decided to rework it in a few days. Before I got back to it, an old high school friend visited. She liked my "unfinished" mobile, and said that she was working in a shop in Georgetown that sold decorative stuff similar to it. She wanted me to bring it to show the fellow who owned the store. So, on a lark, I took it in a few days later. Mr. Ursell, the owner, took it on consignment. It sold about two months later. If, as some say, an artist is someone who sells his work, I was off to a quick start.

Since that first sale, I have been refining my work, which includes stabiles (that is, sculpture that doesn't have movement) as well as mobiles. Much of my work is in private collections. I currently live in Baltimore, MD.

June 2005