When I am making my sculpture I am at peace with myself. I become totally immersed in the work. I listen to the radio, to music and work many hours at a stretch. I always work alone. I don’t like working in rooms with other people. I find their thoughts or talk distracting from the deep concentration and involvement that envelope me.
          I have been working this way since childhood. Ideas grab me, just pop into my head. It could be a person, their mental or physical condition or something I hear on the news or see on the street. Whatever it is I respond to it as an aspect of my own being which I know can almost always be generalized to other people’s being as well. Certainly not everyone but many people have or are experiencing something similar to what I am. If I make a piece of work that expresses my depression, I don’t assume everyone in the world is depressed, but a fair number. Many people have responded to my piece, “The Baby Sucking It’s Thumb.” I sucked my thumb when I was younger and I view thumb sucking as a child’s attempt to satisfy him/herself and feel more secure. This attempt to feel more secure captures the human wish to fend of fears and find a place of safety.
          When I am conceiving a piece, I first make a sketch on paper. When I am satisfied that the image represents what I want to say I build the piece out of clay. I used to fire the clay pieces in the large kiln I built at my studio in Woodstock, New York. Now I make the molds directly from the clay model and then cast the piece in Bronze. I want people to understand the work so that I know it has expressed what I want it to express. Everything I do comes from a need to say something important to me. In my later work such as “Self Portrait 20 years old,” I feel the piece succeeds in expressing feeling of helplessness and sadness as well as any piece I have made. I also like the piece because I am pleased with the form. It is more abstract than some of my earlier work which I would and may do over again. I have moved into making pieces that are more abstract and less literal.
          My art will always originate in my desire to express something that is powerful to me. I don’t look for something to say, it has to come to me. I don’t search for something to express, it comes and I need to create it.