Art and Story Telling

During the 2007 - 2008 school year I've been working with elementary students on ceramic projects that reflect their social studies topics. I was asked to participate in the project by the Yolo County Art Council and have been teaching students in Woodland and Davis. As part of this project I have designed a large ceramic mural that features original ceramic work by Montgomery Elementary students from kindergarten through 6th grade. This project was installed in June 2008.

Judy Chicago Kitty City Sculpture Project

A recent project has been working with feminist artist Judy Chicago. I worked on a sculpture project with her and John Natsoulas. I sculpted eight cat portraits from Chicago’s book Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours. Judy Chicago china painted the final sculptures. The John Natsoulas Gallery unveiled the sculptures in Chicago at the 2005 Sculptural Objects and Functional Art show.

The project inspired me to continue to explore cat imagery. I had a solo show "The Cat Aesthetic" in March featuring cat imagry. This lead to a commission of a large cat for a collector in Napa.

Purple Leopard Commision

Inspired by the Cat Series, I was recently commissioned to create a life size purple leopard for a residence in Napa. These clients have a beutiful art collection surrounded by their vineyard with rolling hills in the distance. The purple color of the sculpture looks especially striking on it's mustard wall when the vineyard in green.

2007

PRIVATE COMMISION OF LIFE SIZED WILD BOAR SCULPTURE

LAFAYETTE, CA

2006

PRIVATE COMMISION OF LIFE SIZED LEOPARD SCULPTURE

Life size purple ceramic leopard for wall by sculpture garden pool area, Napa CA

2005

JUDY CHICAGO COLLABORATION

Collaborative project to create cats featured in Chicago’s recent book. The Sculptures were to be featured at SOFA CHICAGO 2004. During this project, I worked with Judy Chicago to create eight cat sculptures from Chicago’s book Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours. I would sculpt the cats and Judy would china paint them. Our collaboration took place over a 6 month period during which time we communicated by phone, email, and on multiple ocassions worked together in my studio.

2004-2005

UC DAVIS VET SCHOOL, COMPANION FOR ANIMAL HEALTH

designed and create two dog sculptures for the Center for Companion Animal Health. A statue of the dog “Angel”, who had been a patient at the vet school, was the focus of the piece. Angel’s owner donated money to build “Angel’s Courtyard ” for the new Companion Center for Animal Health.

1997 - Two of my dog sculptures installed at the entrance of the Staglin Family Vineyard in Rutheford, a winery noted for it's extensive fine art collection. The Staglin Family Vinyard is sometimes used for high profile events including the wedding of Christina Agulara’ s wedding and the filming of the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap movie with Lindsay Lohan and Dennis Quaid