“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” ~ E.B. White
Paying attention and savoring the world
Photography and Painting
I converse with places through my senses. Looking is a form of listening: color, light, form and pattern are the shared language. Framing the photograph or putting paint on paper is a meditative sensory experience akin to choosing words and putting them together in a poem. Brewster Flats, a special place in central Cape Cod, has been a rich environment for this conversation. The paintings take me back to the sound of the wind, the smell of salt, the heat of the sun on my skin.
Drawings
As a student building my architectural vocabulary, I learned the value of drawing. One teacher in particular, Carlo Pelliccia, taught that drawing is the only reliable way to pay attention to a place, to memorize its lessons and secrets. Drawing is discovery: aspects of your subject reveal themselves and the more you look, the more you notice. It’s a very rewarding way to interact with a place, finding treasures of proportion, form, and principles that will serve a lifelong practice.
Woven Wire Wares
These objects and jewelry are made of an industrial filtration screening called wire cloth. We use copper, brass, and aluminum, and fold them using origami and other techniques. My partners in this were architect Kat Vlahos and Mara O’Connell, who did her MFA thesis on folded paper sculpture. The work evolved spontaneously around our dining room tables, so we called it “Wu Wei,” after the Taoist principle of not striving, just going with the flow.
