Literature, and its ability to transfix and transport, has served as the inspiration for my work for a number of years.  A humble but passionate translator, I use books to create large and elaborate constructions, forms in which a viewer can get lost, as in a well-told tale.

I began by making small-scale pieces for the purpose of photographing them, the photo being the final ‘product’. Quickly I set aside the camera, however, and focused entirely on the making of the sculptures and installations themselves, wanting to see how they would morph - expand - without the resulting photo in mind.  Along with this new focus came a new set of parameters designed to alleviate my guilt over ‘destroying’ books, objects I consider sacred .... that the books must remain in their entirety, and readable, in the final pieces.

I achieve this in most of the pieces by cutting the book (two copies of the book, actually, in order to get both sides of each page, and therefore the text in its entirety) apart line by line - sometimes even word by word, letter by letter - and assembling the text with clear tape into a variety of configurations.  The content of the texts is integral to the the work, the stories within their pages informing and inspiring the shape each piece ultimately takes.

Many of the books I use in my work tell stories of obsession, or the obsessive pursuit - Moby Dick, The Odyssey and Lolita are prime examples.  As I strive to keep the work within the strict parameters I’ve set for myself, and as the pieces become larger, more complex and time- and labor-intensive, obsession serves not only as the leitmotif, but as my own (for better or worse!) personal methodology as well.  Should literature follow in the footsteps of music and film, with books going to the wayside like so many LP’s and VHS tapes, I make my contribution to their preservation with my archive of re-configured books.  In my own obsessive fashion, I am building a unique ‘library’ comprised of classics and personal favorites - a large, idiosyncratic, readable-only-in-theory, and most unwieldy library to be sure!