Did you spin around and around to make yourself dizzy until you fell down? Turn Around is about the dizzy connection between today, tomorrow and yesterday. She is giddy joy and a spirit of hope and the sadness of change and loss along the way.  She is spinning in the past, spinning in the present, spinning in the future.  As the sweep of her arms billows out in the wind,  items from her past and future fall into the weeds arounds her.

In 2012 Turn Around was on public display for one year at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado as part of that city’s “Art for a While” program. It was also selected to be be part of Blue Springs Missouri’s Evolve exhibition and was displayed on Main Street there in 2013.

• Created in 2011
• Cast in bronze
• Approximately 180 pounds
• 50”h x 30”w x 30”d
• Install to plate with 3 half-inch bolts

Build Bridges Not Walls is a small-scale model for a piece intended to be large scale.  This maquette is rendered in fused and slumped glass. The wall has a deeply textured layer of singed copper on its surface.  The bridge is a translucent arc of pink.

More than just a political statement about current world issues, this piece is intended to embody inner struggles as well as a philosophy for growth.  In the wall, there is density, darkness and restriction. In the bridge there is light and reflection and openness. The bridge seems fragile in comparison to the wall, but in its graceful arc there is enormous strength.

Today, as I write this, our government is taking bids on the construction of a border wall to keep immigrants out. Suppose this fearful act were defeated by the idea that immigration is our greatest strength; that we are not one people but all peoples, and as such, we have all the collective wisdom and resources to accomplish the unimaginable.  

Build Bridges Not Walls is a work of hope and a diagram for a better world.