(dramatic music) - Currently, I am working on a series of sculptural paintings.

They are collage like and assemblage like.

And I collect these materials just because, you know, it starts as a kid, you find these, picks up rocks, you pick up acorns.

Put 'em in your pocket on your walk, and you take 'em home and you're like, they're from this beautiful place that you were in.

And they talked to me about the cycles of life and impermanence and how things change.

(dramatic music) All of this comes into just object.

And when you put objects together, they start to tell different stories.

(dramatic music) I have been working most of my life in clay.

Clay just could speak anything I wanted it to say practically.

I remember an early series of clay masks that went on the wall with doors with hinges that opened up and had this mixed media material going on behind them.

I did become a little bit unsatisfied with that because the doors in the masks were so small.

I wanted to play more with these materials that were speaking to each other.

I built a torso that had doors that opened here, so I had a bigger area to work with inside.

Masks are in general a covering.

They're also a way to hide.

So the openings were also about going into the subconscious and sharing the things that we usually don't.

One of the beautiful things about working with clay, but one of the problematic issues about working with clay is that it is very demanding in terms of timing.

Certain things have to happen when it's ready.

I found myself trying to keep these things from freezing or drying out, hoping I could get to them on the weekend.

And I was at an art teacher's conference, someone was demonstrating encaustic, and they're, you know, melting beeswax, which has this wonderful smell that I have great associations with from my childhood.

I bought some stuff on sale and set it up in my studio.

It's very similar to clay in that it can be additive and subtractive.

It's also transformed by heat, the same way that clay is, through firings, that there's a certain amount of serendipity that you have to go with the flow.

And I guess I like that.

(dramatic music) Initially I was just playing with wax and seeing what it could do and working very abstractly.

And then I went straight into this long series of landscapes, really focused on trees.

Then I retired, and then things opened up for me.

I took some time right off and raised myself a puppy, which was wonderfully distracting.

And I brought my gardens back to a place of better control.

I finished a long season in the garden, and I'd been putting all these things in my studio, and I got to my studio in the fall, and, oh wow, I really needed to clean up here somehow.

And I started cataloging and categorizing and putting things into drawers that I have.

And then I just started like, oh no.

I started putting things together in a new way.

Something spoke to each other, and I would put them together and there would be a new synergy there.

Then somewhere along the line, finished encaustic pieces, came into that I think with this piece over here.

And where I'm at now is working in this totem series, which incorporates everything.

(dramatic music) Art brings me to my very core and center.

When I am involved in the making, I'm having a dialogue with the materials.

A lot of these larger pieces have a sense of being about them.

This one in particular, River Totem, I really like its contrast with the other ones in that its much softer.

Its colors are a little cooler.

Its much more feminine compared to the strong masculinity of say Primal Dance.

I like what I'm seeing in that elements of work that I've done all my life are coming together, and it's exciting.

(dramatic music)