ARTIST

"I think my own personal methodology perhaps started around 1970 and since then it's been an evolutionary process of one piece leading me to the next, the previous piece lending enough information to go on to make the next piece. I progress relatively slowly and I don't jump into another radical form or anything like that, but if you look at the work over a period of years, you can see the progression from working with pure light sources and natural materials in their natural state, like sand, up until relatively geometric architecturally based forms dealing with cement and plate glass.

"The technical aspect of my work is uniquely mine. Some artists are able to manipulate gouache or oil paint or work with video or dance. My interest lies in the use of systems of materials.

"Sometimes I'll be explaining my work and I'll lapse into these long technical dissertations. I don't think of it that way, but people come back to me and say, "Your work is so technical", but it isn't to me. My father was a lens designer, a scientist. He helped me with some of my early work when I was a teenager, and the idea of analysis and a scientific approach comes quite naturally to me, but I like to use it in a creative sense.

"I insist on a fairly large studio because I have one area of the studio where I'm taking pieces and another area which is purely experimental. It enables me to separate the ideas of making art and just experimenting with materials and seeing what relationships I can get between myself and the materials.

"I have a tendency to think out mentally and never physically make them. That's exciting to me, working out a game plan. I also paint, and I think the reason I paint is just pure expression, to counterbalance the more scientific side of the work.

"I come from a generation where the idea for a sculpture was completed before the execution. But what I'm trying to do is incorporate an expressionistic methodology in relationship to that. A classic example would be an early piece that I did with sand and glass. The glass was set up in a very highly complex geometric pattern, simple in its arrangement but complex in its finality - the way the light went through it. The whole piece was suspended in seven tons of sand that was arbitrarily spread out, but the sand was very important to the structure of the piece. It actually was the substance that held the piece together. And so as arbitrarily as these mounds appeared, they were very integral to the structure of this architectural form.

"My present work reflects this approach. There is a strong geometric feeling and at the same time, an emotional or expressionistic edge that's introduced."