Artist Statement

 

I am drawn to the mysterious, dark and spiritual places in nature.  Places that are off the beaten path where no one has been or even considers going.  After returning to some of those places many times a year, for perhaps many years, a deep connection forms.  In different seasons and under different kinds of light I start to recognize the same trees and rocks, even the patterns of lichen and the feel of the duff under my feet.  When I’m in those places lurking in the shadows, often making photographs of other shadows, I have a profound sense of being.  Experiencing the sounds of water and wind mixing with the beating of my own heart is a sacred experience.  It is my own form of meditation – a commune with the land and lake.

 

My photographs are a result of the many journeys I have made from the din and fog of civilization to some of the rare, open, people-less spaces that remain on the Great Lakes.  Both the physical and temporal journeys have been key inspirations to my work.  As arduous as some of those journeys have been they inspire me to seek out the beauty of light and composition where few others tread.  My photographs are little treasures of grand places.

 

Over thirty years ago those journeys first started out as annual family trips to the rocky shores of the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin.  It is here where I first learned to appreciate the smell of the lake, observe and read the fickle atmosphere over the open water and examine the strikingly diverse fauna and rare plants.  The reluctant return to the city always motivated the next set of explorations on the Peninsula.

 

From my childhood home to the arid desert of Arizona and back again to the shores of Lake Michigan, the power of water (and the lack of it) has quietly influenced my path in life.  This realization has manifested in my current body of work which is dedicated to the watersheds and shores of the Great Lakes basin.  

 

In this work I am interested in showing the simple beauty of time passing. Capturing the language of the land and lake by collecting light over time as objects in the landscape move in cyclic rhythms. Capturing the patterns of the landscape and vegetation and how humans interact on this landscape.  This beauty is contrasted with studies of the threats to nature in the Great Lakes basin.