Artist Statement

As a student of classical archaeology and a scuba diver, I explored underwater ruins of Greek temples and ancient shipwrecks off the island of Paros in the Aegean Sea. Years later, I dove on kelp forests and the Kona coast's blue vibrancy. The sea life below and ancient lost worlds connected somehow to a deeper knowing that demanded my attention.

When I was eleven years old in suburban New York (1965), I spotted my first UFO a short distance from my home over a stand of trees. It was a blinding light floating silently below a huge, silver- gray ellipse. Electrified, I chased after it on my bike as it zipped away.

I sighted several more celestial, unidentified flying objects in the next thirty plus years. But the deeper connection between my awareness and a larger consciousness has been a gradual process of awakening, as each experience was accompanied by a voice that I was being shown these things for a purpose. As I contemplated the infiniteness of the Great Spirit's creation, I've located a certain sense of remembrance - an awareness of collective consciousness that forms a symbiotic whole or unity. That such organisms actually do exist in this world in a few varieties of oceanic jellyfish composed of thousands of tiny individuals working as one was a wonderful reminder that this is not just my own day dream.

Through my sculptural work, I have sought to convey something of the heretofore unseen cosmic equivalents to our submariner colonies. So it is that I perceive there to be huge, flying, cosmic entities which move through the vastness of space, much as do the great jellies of earth's oceans, astride currents they alone can sense.

This relationship between these gentle, oceanic dwellers and the mobile, intergalactic collectives within the great mystery of "outer space" that choose to congeal into similar forms as the jellyfish, now seems completely real to me.

It is an alchemical determination that I am convinced will be eventually verified with my own eyes, even as they have already been "seen" through my gnostic Self.

In the sharing of this vision, I have felt compelled to use blown glass elements which when fused together physically mimic in some small way the magnificence of the great interstellar ones and the indwelling light that moves them. I have named them after the known stars since these are the most palpable manifestations of the mystery that inspires those of us who ask the night sky for answers.

In time, I hope to add internal illumination and movement to my new pieces so to more fully capture the essence of their inspiration and further promote magical thoughts and possibilities for those who come to see them.