Botanical Series
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, I like everybody else sat and stared at the news in horror experiencing an overwhelming sense of sadness because of feeling unable to help. Being the proverbial “starving artist” I had no money to give and I couldn’t travel to Louisiana to help. But what I had was my art and of that I felt I could give willingly. My friends felt the same and a fellow artist organized an art auction in San Diego to raise money to help displaced students and close to ten thousand dollars was raised.
That was the original impetus for creating the small cabinets in the Botanical Series. The first three were created for the auction but I kept making these small cabinets based on objects, textures, shapes and colors I find in nature and soon I had made dozens of them. I have kept making them ever since finding an immense joy in creating these small, intimate objects derived from the natural world around me. Being a furniture maker, I have found it very pleasurable to turn to pure form once in a while, just letting objects such as seed pods, bulbs, kelp, succulents and flowers inspire the forms I work with.
From a response to a natural disaster grew a whole new body of work I hadn’t planned or expected. Inspiration works in strange ways….
