ROCK FIELD
Redwood, 2000
16 ft. x 10 ft.

For the installation piece: "Rock Field," an array of rock-like forms, sculpted by direct carving in redwood, conceived as a work comprising twenty-five to fifty units, but grew to one hundred and fifty individual units, each unique in size and form, but related harmoniously by virtue of subject and medium, and the art by which they were realized; visualize a rock strewn, almost dry, river bed, or a rocky ocean beach, and you will see manifested what I hope will be the abstraction of my idea and intent.

The ideal method for anyone setting up the installation, I conceive as a search for the Zen-like result of spontaneous occurrence, by emptying the mind of designing, planning, organizing, composing, preconceptions, or conscious control. This may seem conceptually simple and easy, but in practice, it proves to be a formidable challenge, that can exert extreme demands on one's mental and psychological resources; the drive to organize and control will immediately present itself with irresistible urgency, being as it is, innate to our natural being.

Failure to achieve the Zen approach need not prevent the obvious alternative of deliberate decision and conscious intervention.

For me the idea of making rocks by mimesis in wood was relatively simple, compared to the original geological and cosmological process that created the universe and our home planet, but in a sense that I can not explain, because it is just too abstract, I identify with that process, and am brought intimately to the subject...sustained by the energy of the idea and the association to the earth.