Well for me an ideal is to have the work presented in a place, I don’t care about the background so
much, all tough it’s interesting, if its white it has one presence and if it’s not it has another, in a place
where people walk a lot. People walk a lot, many people see it. A whole environment is my favorite,
and I have a piece that I did for the Robert-Wood-Johnson Hospital in Hamilton, New Jersey, which
is as people coming outside of the operating room, the piece is a huge 28 food tall wall. And its all
carved, mostly gold leave, and its called Hand Garden Doctors wall. And it’s using the doctors hands
as if they were flowers for plants. I wanted to celebrate the doctors hands, so they gave me twelve
head doctors and I traced their hands, and I made their hands like leaves or flowers. And they are
carved in there, as people walk through the hall, there are on the wall, and there are all those gold
leave hands.
I like the gallery concept enough, because it’s interesting to hang your work on a white wall. But
what I don’t like is if not enough people see it. In museums, more people go, so I like that part is
better. But I really like the idea, people walking by my art, spending time with it, or even fleetingly go
by but every day, so that the work begins to unravel and speak to them in some way.
I got invited to show in the church and the work has a real spiritual quality anyway. It’d be the third
time I show in a church. It gives people an opportunity to spend time with the work. It gives people
an opportunity to really look at the spiritual connection, like the mystery of the art, or to feel it and I
think that that quality is something that is kind of exciting to me.
As an artist it’s hard to be objective, so I’m not sure if I’m properly objective, but people responded
very nicely to the work. And it means that every Sunday several groups of people will come and
spend time with my work. During worships in the middle of the week, people will come and spend
time with it. This is, to me, and artists dream you know, because the work then dialogues, and I’m
interested in what people have to say about that so I ask them to do that and they have children
there who spend time with it. And they are even going to do a thing, with the way the sticks and logs
are done. With the station of the cross I have kids do works with sticks and little logs and things, so
that’ll be fun.
