Time is a central theme in my work – I am fascinated by the endless ways time affects the human experience. Why do the values of time seem to shift as we age, grieve, fall in love? Is memory time travel? Where do I go when I am dreaming? What is de-ja-vu? I believe that all of time exists at once – a beautiful ever-flowing of past, present, and future. And in the west time moves in wild, mysterious ways. The wind works slow, for centuries carving canyons and riverbeds. And simultaneously a dust devil will take out the seeds you just planted in an instant. You learn to be slow and steady. Quick and sharp. The works I have submitted to A Celebration of the West reflect various experiences of time in this bright and dusty corner of the country. Memory, geology, archives, and oral histories are all reflected in these works.

My work explores time’s visible and invisible patterns in nature and human experiences through Eastern and Western perspectives, utilizing the juxtaposition between traditional and contemporary methodologies to raise philosophical questions about time, being and becoming, seeing and unseeing, and the aesthetics of duality.

Using linear threads to connect, compile and create an immersive ethereal space, I approach my work as a metaphorical structure to explore the passage of time. This investigation provides viewers with a sense of possibility, spontaneity and physicality, visibility and invisibility through color gradation within the work representing the progression of time, while also reflecting on different concepts of time: Western time as linear, Eastern time as circular.

The color gradations and labor involved in my art reflect the role of time in nature, as seen in the cyclical pattern of day and night, and the changing of the seasons–all echoing deep time.

With this piece, I incorporated the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly in its 3 distinct stages of caterpillar, chrysalis, and the fully formed adult. Metamorphosis, rebirth, and renewal are common ideas conjured initially when thinking of the Monarch through her stages of life. But this transition, although fascinating, can be taken for granted much like the passage of time. In a way, the life of the monarch represents 3 distinct moments in time: the past, the present, and the future. Although change is the most obvious meaning when considering the butterfly, this change cannot happen without the inevitability of time. It is a necessary ingredient to all life, not just the Monarch. In all of her regality, the Monarch shows us that even as we grow, age, and pass on, each stage of life and each passing moment can be its own source of beauty and wonder all its own. Without the reliability of time, the stages before, presently, and after would not be as captivating and extraordinary.

About 7 years I found myself, unintentionally, making a series of sculptures showing the human life cycle. I say ‘unintentionally; as the pieces were thought of, and created, out of sequence. Some of the titles, man and woman, zygote, birth, mother and children, the teenage years. Then, I found myself making a design, without an articulated title. After 6 weeks of looking at it on the fireplace mantle, I realized that I had articulated, in metal, the concept: time. The last phase of the life cycle. That was 2015; I revisited the concept a few months ago (2024) with newer tooling and some improved techniques. The piece has the same title: “Time” 4.

As a Severe ReConstructivist, I am a self taught found object sculptor of 28 years, with extensive experience in large scale public art installations, on loan programs, and public and private collections – in a style I call ‘Western Futurism’. I grew up in New Orleans, Colorado 12 years, and have lived and created in Tucson, AZ for 6 years. The parts found at thrift stores, trash nights, and flea markets from the Golden Age of American manufacturing contrasts the effects on the cultures, environment, and hardships of Western expansion on the Indigenous Peoples, creating my version of the West in environmental, socio-political current events, and western story telling imagery. I find parts that have never seen each other that mesh naturally and form my style, in a contemporary commentary sending a message about the past, present, and future. Recycling is a major key, finding the raw materials by hunt and instinct, acquiring the vintage and beautiful in out of the way places.

I feel time that has already passed contains healing power. Perhaps in WESTAF’s case it was the people who dedicated their lives to WESTAF’s mission which pushed WESTAF to new heights and success. A celebration occurred on the 50th year for WESTAF, in my piece, artists will focus, respect and honor The Long Walk for 1,674 Days.

“The Long Walk: 1,674 Days” is a powerful tribute to the Navajo people’s resilience during their forced relocation from 1863 to 1868. This unique durational composition, performed over 1,674 days, symbolizes the exact duration of the Navajo Long Walk, honoring the memory and spirit of those who endured the journey. Durational music is an unorthodox category of musical composition and performance that emphasizes the temporal dimension of sound, extending over long periods, 1,674 days, in the case of The Long Walk. The approach challenges the traditional concepts of time and structure in music, focusing instead on the experience of performers and audiences.

Vanishing Murals: A Reflection on Time and Impermanence

My vanishing murals explore the delicate balance between creation and destruction, permanence and ephemerality, reflecting the transitory nature of time. In creating these murals, I use natural, foraged materials like wildfire charcoal, earth, and water, infusing the art with elements of the environment that are themselves subject to change. Each mural is designed to disappear, washed away by water, allowing the elements to reclaim the artwork and complete the cycle of impermanence.

Time is central to my work—both in the moment of creation and in its inevitable dissolution. These murals are a meditation on the passing of time, evoking the fragile beauty of nature and the impermanence of our own human experiences. The vanishing process, inspired by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of sand mandalas, serves as a reminder that time is fluid, and all things, no matter how beautiful or monumental, eventually fade.

For me “celebrating the West “ invites zeroing in on particular events or stories with utmost graphic specificity. Some of those great American Western stories are past, some present. I experience time as fluid in my western paintings. Past can impinge on the present; the present can penetrate the past.

The 19th C. ethos of “Manifest Destiny” dominated the shaping of the American west. My painting from the series “Theater of the Land: Cavalry and Crow.” tells a series of overlapping stories from that time. The history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is another epic western story. Hanford symbolizes the formidable military challenge (and ethical conundrum) faced by the American government and the scientific community in the 1940s: how to meet the threat of Nazi Germany’s rumored building of an Atomic bomb. Hanford produced not only the plutonium used in the bomb dropped over Nagasaki Japan in August,1945 bringing World War II to an end.

My work delves into the ways we experience our most personal images. How do we hold them, alter them, imagine or escape them? Why do we revisit them over and over again? I explore my own memories and the collective memories of my family, and look toward the possibilities of the future.

With heavy influence from photography, I point to the role of image as storyteller, collector, historian, and deceiver. The change in recent history of the photographic image and its exponential influence on our perceptions shapes how we perceive the past. Through looking at old photographs or childhood toys, I ask the viewer to determine why we recall and what we learn from collecting the past. Recollection is a key facet of these pieces, noting repeatedly that memory is sacred but malleable, influenced by context, experience, and time. Each time we remember, something is altered or something new is gleaned. It is crucial that we are discerning with our nostalgia.

My latest body of work responds to the concept of time through the creation of ephemeral artworks that are documented photographically and with time based media (video). I create sculptures from clay that are recycled, rather than fired in a kiln. Abandoning the concept of permanence in the physical objects I create has allowed me to let go of my attachment to them and accept their fragility and inevitable change. It has also led to a greater sense of freedom in how I combine clay with impermanent materials as well as where and how I document these pieces. Taking these works out into the natural environments that inspired them adds a new dimension to how they can be presented. Elements like time, sound, and light have been playing a greater role in my aesthetic process. These ephemeral artworks are part of an on-going experiment that asks me to reconsider a material I have worked with for decades within an ever-changing landscape.

One major branch of semiotics defines the sign as a triadic relation. It is “something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity.” A sign can be a symbol, an indicator, an individual.

Exploring a material with this much direct metaphorical gravitas is a rare opportunity for a visual artist. I was first inspired to begin puzzling out a way to render, conceptually, the ephemeral nature of human civilization while pondering the geologic strata of the Grand Canyon as I floated down the Colorado River.

The rest of the journey unfolded in my Alaska studio. This work takes the long geological view where the pressure of time takes our meanings, our intentions and alters them into something indecipherable but still has an echo of our wants, needs and goals.

This series is not about looking back but instead, looking forward. What will we leave behind? What will be found in our geological strata?

The Strata Series is a marker of our time spent here on this planet.

The exploration of time is a thread that runs through all of my work. Reaching far into the past, gazing deep into the future, attempting to capture now, and playing at crashing these distinctions into one. All the while seeking glimpses of the eternal.

Nowhere is this thread more directly depicted than in my series entitled At the Edge of All We Have Built. Here I am looking at these two concepts of time: One, chronos, which refers to seconds and minutes—it’s what we use when we say the meeting begins at 11:00am or the movie starts at 7:30pm. The other is kairos. The definition of kairos is “a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action; the opportune and decisive moment.”

Kairos time is where all the characters in this series find themselves, a time of shifting into direct awareness of that which is bigger than themselves that produces solemn awe—signaling that the “conditions are right,” that this is “the opportune and decisive moment.”

The title is “Newspaper”. This is a Hypar Blanket of over 55,000 glass seed beads. The timelessness of humor! “Newspaper” honors the vintage riddle “what is black and white and read all over?” When on display at galleries or at air fairs, every generation of visitor knows this riddle and recites it without prompting. And humor in the design! My rules were simple: every Hypar (warped square) must have black and white rows of varying lengths and widths, and every Hypar must have at least one red bead. Viewers have fun finding the Hypar that is hiding just one red bead!

We all know what time is and how easily it can slip away. The following images serve as visual reminders of time – forgotten memories, or the slow erosion of presence.

I am an artist fascinated by art history. Time, whether seen as an eternity or a fleeting moment, inspired me to create “Passage of Time: The Evolution of Art and Technology Through the Ages,” a project documenting this process.

This series of portraits transitions from youth to old age, arranged left to right. As the heads turn, the faces age, representing the passage of time. Each portrait reflects a significant artistic movement, spanning from ancient history to today, and symbolizes global humanity by incorporating diverse ethnicities and races. The chosen ethnicities reflect each period’s art movements, historical context, and technological advancements.

Behind these portraits, a background panel illustrates the evolution of technology from ancient times to the modern day. What’s fascinating is that this evolution of technology occurred alongside the progression of art, showing the interconnectedness of these two fields and how they have influenced each other over time.

“Eureka!” is a mixed media wall sculpture containing a large collection of found objects and materials, and seeks to simultaneously represent two elements of Time – the instantaneous moment of a singular event, and also the subsequent evolution of events stemming from that initial moment. The vehicle used for this representation of Time is gold, an elemental metal ubiquitous in human history and affairs. The center area of “Eureka!” represents that instantaneous moment of Time when a prospector’s hammer exposes a flash of color within the cracks of a fractured rock, accompanied by dumbstruck excitement and the exclamation of the namesake word. Outward from the rock, the flow of Time is represented by the various sprays of gold objects emanating from each crack. These gradually transform from raw flakes and particles created at inception into a vast outward collection of technological and cultural objects, each evolving over Time and serving as continued testimony to human creativity.

In The Riff of Silence, I explore time as a layered and fluid experience, where past and present intersect through double-exposure photography. By overlaying two unrelated moments onto a single frame, I create a visual dialogue between distinct points in time, challenging the linear understanding of time’s progression.

Chance and serendipity play a key role in my process, merging moments into abstract spaces that invite viewers to contemplate how time overlaps and influences perception. These images reveal the fluidity of time, transforming ordinary street scenes into stages where time itself becomes a performance, unfolding through layers of memory and observation.

My work connects to the exhibition’s theme by reflecting time as a fusion of experiences—blurring the boundaries between past, present, and future, and offering a new way to interpret the passage of time.

In my star trail videos, I combine hundreds of 30-second exposures of the night sky to create a continuous sequence that reveals the motion of the stars. This process transforms stillness into motion, illustrating the concept of time in a way that we can’t see with our naked eye. Each exposure captures a fragment of time, but when combined, they show the continuous motion of the Earth’s rotation. By showing how the stars trace their paths across the sky, my work depicts the passage of time and shows how countless small moments come together to create something much larger.

During the pandemic, I had a solo show and created on canvas an actual TIME BEING – curious soul geared-up and ready whatever is to come. The ‘being’ is made up of timely images and facsimiles of time pieces and timekeeping apparatus and is surrounded by various motherboards and dials. The solo exhibit and this piece were both titled FOR THE TIME BEING. LOOKING @ THE BIG SLIDE is rooted in the passage of time and the aging process. There are many witnesses ‘eyeing’ the action. The ‘big slide’ refers to what starts happening to the body as we age but also refers to a favorite amusement park ride from back-in-the-day, a harrowing adventure where one was wrapped in burlap and pushed out & down onto a slide and into the unknown (not unlike getting old).