Shop Liquidambar Art Gallery

Bowls, mugs, wall hangings, and pendants are hand-built from soft clay impressed with leaves, seeds, and flowers gleaned from the vast biodiversity of our bioregion. The delicate fossil-like tracing in the clay shows details of veins, twigs, and flowers that identify the many species. My work is based on forms and designs from the forests and farms of the Sequatchie Valley and the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. The elegant designs resemble delicate engraving and 18th-19th century botanical plates. Patterns are emphasized by use of safe, natural oxides, such as iron rust. I use stoneware clay fired to 2200 degrees in an electric kiln.  The functional ware has food-safe interior glazes and natural unglazed exteriors.

My art utilizes my experience as a botanist and education director of Sequatchie Valley Institute, the environmental center where we live. My goal as an artist is to share my love of nature and art with our community and to encourage the development of artists and craftspeople in Tennessee.  My work reflects my love of our native plants and enables me to share their beauty and symmetry, while emphasizing the fragility of our exquisite ecosystem and the unique biodiversity of the beautiful Sequatchie Valley.

Social and cultural issues, science, and my experience as an American woman abroad are essential instruments in the creation of my art. I was raised in the rural Tennessee of my father and cultured by the colorful traditions of my mother’s Colombian blood. Exposure to both Appalachian and Colombian artisans laid the foundation for my appreciation of the aesthetic quality that originates from human hands.

As a mixed-media artist, most of my abilities have come from (wilderness and villages  museums, archeological sites and) 30 years of life on my four-generation family homestead and intentional community in the Sequatchie Valley on the western edge of the Southern Appalachians. From the time I was six and running wild on the mountainside, I have cared for goats and fowl, worked with  mules and llamas, operated a wood shop and sawmill, designed edible landscapes and a permaculture forest farm, and built epic organic structures of logs, rock, straw, and clay. Without the experiences, skills and access to tools that my life has provided, I would not be able to create the art now enriching my life and the lives of others.

I have organized my color reactions into a pattern language akin to the periodic table. This enables me to use my complex color pallet and adjustable flame chemistry reactions to explore new color frontiers. Using graphite and brass tools, many of my own design,  I form the glass by spinning its molten form (much as a potter does on a wheel) while blending and layering color, painting with glass until I know balance and harmony.  I then often flatten the 3-D form into 2-D landscapes to bring the eyes focus into one plane. My current focus is on analyzing and harmonizing my color theories while marrying metal form and sculpture.

My steampunk-scientific curiosity has recently lead me into an electrochemical romance with the relatively new art of electroforming, which dates back only to 1804.  Inspired by pataphysics (the nature of imaginary machines), steam punk, post-industrial collapse, and objectivist utopian art, combined with my collection of abstruse objects, my work continues to evolve into increasingly  complex multilayered designs.

The Glass: The colors and nature of my glasswork have now reached an apex of complexity after ten years of experimentation and exploration into color combinations and reactions.  I use the explicit properties of over 200 types of glass from Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and the US.  I layer and stretch color to almost microscopic detail and three dimensional depth creating an abstract and varying path of visual harmony.

The Perfect Flame: The infinite possibilities of flame chemistry can be subtle or extreme as fine adjustments provide a distinct and abstract effect on each color reaction. This simultaneously finesses and forces new color combinations, possibly never before seen.

The Design: I join to my glasswork numerous detailed and treasured items to form three-dimensional objects representing the art of an unknown time.

The Synthesis: Using an electroforming machine which I designed and built, multiple layers of copper are electrically transported through a liquid solution and atomically bonded to both the copper metal and the electrically conductive paint on my sculptures.  The electroformed copper is finished with a series of chemical reactions creating a strong and organically patterned finish reminiscent of an object that is very old or a relict from the future.

More identifiable and functional objects in my collection of work include marbles, cabinet knobs, lamp pulls, apothecary bottles, ear rings, hair sticks, pendants, buttons, divining pendulums, medicine bags, solar system replicas, cremation ornamentation, and kaleidoscopes.