| What are your earliest memories related to art? | |
| As a kid growing up in West Texas, the outline and mystery of Medicine Mounds, a site that was sacred to Comanche Indians broke that vast, flat landscape that was my home. It was, I realize now, an artistic expression of these ancient people. | |
| How and when did you start becoming an artist yourself? | |
| As an adult and long past student days, my curiosity and growing interest in all things artistic, lead me to take my first art class at Kilgore College. | |
| What was the evolution like toward finding your current voice and visual vocabulary? | |
| Some twenty years later, I found my freedom to take bigger steps in defining my own artistic expression. I had resigned my job, moved to San Miguel de Allende and dove headfirst in to all things art. I surrounded myself with books by many artists. Art exhibitions became “must go to activities”. I dared to teach myself the difficult art of watercolor. In time my travels took me to Peru where I was fascinated by the ancient art of the indigenous people of these great mountains and the Amazon River. The humble gourd, used for centuries as a vessel, was developed into a surface that could hold the intricate imaginative figures of these native people. I had found a new medium — the art of gourd pyrography.. | |
| What is your process like? | |
| All of the images on my gourds are burnt into the surface of the dried gourd with a hot needle. I then use acrylics for coloring. I incorporate a variety of decorative items including cabochons, seashells, vintage costume jewelry and various other unique items that help to carry my thematic designs. These range from native American and Mexican motifs to contemporary and others. | |
| Is there anything from your artist statement that you wish to expound on, that you normally don’t have the chance to discuss? | |
| I find pleasure in introducing this ancient art along with the history of the humble gourd to the curious who ask “what it is”! | |
| What do you try to control in your surfaces, and what do you leave to chance? | |
| Each of my art gourd pieces carries out a theme. But those themes are artistic as opposed to “crafty”! | |
| Where do you see your work going from here? | |
| I am content with the steady progress I continue to make with this ancient art. | |
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