Like many older artists, I’ve come to realize that certain ideas: semi-disguised by their presentation in different forms and materials, but identifiable nonetheless-- have recurred periodically since my career began. These themes are more like relatives than friends, in that you don’t choose them, but rather, you are born into your relationship with them. Over the past few months, though, there has been a shift. I feel a need to move the narrative along towards something new.
Searching for a path forward, I’ve found myself drawn to the work of the Chicago Imagists. Their heyday in the late ‘60s and early ’70s coincides with my earliest awareness of art, and of my own ambition. I remember my guilty love for various members of the group-- Ed Paschke, Roger Brown, Jim Nutt, Barbara Rossi-- but, even more vividly, my simultaneous feelings of attraction and repulsion when I contemplated  anything by Christina Ramberg. Her vision of the constrained female form was radical in that braless, disheveled era, and I was too young to understand what she was saying. Still, the message sank in, taking hold.  
The pieces you see here, still at the stage of unabashed homage to some elements of what I perceive her work to be about, evoke the female form, even more than ceramic vessels usually do (lips, bellies, shoulders) in a state of restraint or containment. Hair and drapery, which have made many appearances in my work over the years, are common interests. Hair is power—what else could it be, for it to be so dangerous that entire cultures insist on covering it?—and the faux-wrappings these sculptures feature are meant to evoke everything from girdle to bandage. Some suggest burlesque; others, in which the textures of hair are mostly hidden, ask the viewer to imagine what lies beneath.