I was commissioned from late 2021 to early 2022 to create a two-sided sculpture representing how a person suffering from debilitating headaches felt before pharmaceutical help and then how her life changed once on the prescribed drug to help prevent the recurring pain. She described her life in the "before" as the "end of the world" in which "the walls were caving in" and she just wanted to remain in bed in dark isolation. The "before" side of the vignette represents her desperation within her home. The facade, the roof, and the walls are collapsing in on themselves.  A dark bedroom sits above a library with fallen bookshelves. Once she found the medical relief, she described life as "a breathe of fresh air". This side of the sculpture depicts the same house mirrored but now intact with a balcony overlooking a farmers market with the curtains fluttering in the breeze and flowers blooming on her railing. 

The client provided her testimony and an historic image of a bombed Irish village. They gave me total freedom as I took it from there. 

12" wide x 24" deep x 12" tall

I want to live in that world. This common response to my miniature spaces and sculpture expresses how scale can awaken imaginations and transport viewers. By compressing time and space, miniaturization as an art form tangles with nostalgia, commingling historic and fantastic forms. As a result, viewers are enchanted by scenes they can see clearly with their eyes but inhabit only with their imaginations.

My original plan was to recreate the scene where one of the main angel characters, Damiel, is overlooking the shoulder of a young man reading while other angels sit on the balcony ledge. That scene is embedded in my porous memory as ethereal yet wishful. Don't we all wish we had an angel sitting nearby? These were not guardian angels though; they were only observing angels. They felt the emotions that humans felt but could not intervene. There are heartbreaking moments in the film. I came across a 41 second scene where Homer, an elderly man, climbs the library steps and sits down surrounded by these glowing globes. As he stares at a spinning solar system model, an orrery, he daydreams: “The old man wonders why we cannot just have peace but always war. If he gives up, mankind won't have a storyteller, and humans will forget their childhood.” The globes lack delineation, man-made boundaries. Thus, a library provides endless trajectories to travel and dream, even if they are physically enclosed spaces. There is an omniscient feeling evoked in my wall-less sculptural interpretation, similar to what the observing angel might have felt. Watching yet helpless. 

One of a series of six miniature vignettes I created inspired by famous library scenes from film, literature, and television series. This movie, of the same name, represented a formerly divided city of Berlin, with commentary on boundaries and freedoms in times soon after the war. The film was purposely shot in black and white scenes to set the somber tone but when one of the main characters, an observing angel, wishes to leave his immortality to SEE color, to FEEL the weight of a stone, and to LOVE a trapeze artist who wears angel wings, the movie gradually shifts to color.

14" wide x 15.5" deep x 21" tall. 2019

This is one of a six part sculptural series of library scenes represented in film, television and literature. This vignette combines materials of varying scales in which the Victorian parlor is depicted in Ray Bradbury's book and Francois Truffaut's 70's movie version. A three tier bookcase becomes the various levels of a Victorian parlor and a woman's forbidden library in the attic. Again, a play on scales with classic books on the upper and lower shelves, while a miniature bookcase is revealed on the upper "attic" level. This is the forbidden library in a not too distant future when it is illegal to read or own a book. Reminiscent of Stasi led Germany and the current assault on education and culture as we know it. Libraries are losing their significance. The middle tier is the miniature vignette after the "firemen" have discovered the library in the attic and have thrown the books over the railing  - this is just before the house is set afire. A powerful scene turns the power around when the woman takes out her own match, taking control from the "firemen" awaiting to make an example of her. 

The scene is a one inch to one foot scaled miniature made of steel, copper mesh, paper books, a marble, vintage keys from Nuremberg and a child's silver spoon. 

16" wide x 12.5" deep x 43.5" tall

During some of my travels, I visit the historic libraries of the towns and cities, finding their inherent beauty to be peaceful places of culture, community, and learning.

Nearly everything is either made of or made to look like BOOKS! Banning and censoring books are some of the first steps taken to create an autocratic society to keep people in line and not question authority.

This miniature vignette was inspired by episode 8, season 1, of the Twilight Zone, released on November 20, 1959, and directed by Rod Serling.  The same set, located at MGM in California, was used for the 1960 movie version of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. I recreated the ruins in steel. The original loosely resembles the New York Public Library evidenced by the overturned arch. The grand stair represents a stack of books realigned, the risers are reminiscent of page edges. The spines of the books, listed on the side of the vignette, are titles referenced in the episode, other Twilight Zone episodes, or favorites of Rod Serling. Stainless steel mesh is used to represent the fabric covering of hardback books. I combined the scene of the vault with the library steps. The vault represents four books without covers making up the thick walls. The exposed pages are made of vintage printer plates and wire. The vault door locks and gears are clock and watch parts.

Henry Bemis, a bank clerk, just wanted to read, his favorite pastime. Wanting to talk about what he was reading, Mr. Bemis’ boss, bank customers, and even his wife just didn’t understand. So he would lock himself in the bank vault during lunch time, with newspaper tucked under his arm. While in there, an explosion happens (barely noticeable, the newspaper headline had said “H-BOMB C…). Picking himself up after being knocked off his chair, he ventures out of the vault. Total destruction. The bank, his town…all rubble. He finds the remnants of a grocery store and feels reassured he can survive but as he wanders through the ruins, despair starts to set in…until he sees the sprawling steps of the public library. Books tumbled down the steps. With excitement, he starts stacking his favorite novels in the world…January, February, March…Time Enough at Last he says dreamily as he notices the Library Clock…but once he sits and reaches for his FIRST book to read, his glasses fall from his face and the lenses crack. By far one of the most eerie endings on film. 

26" wide x 13" deep x 13.5" tall. 2019.

A miniature vignette set within a full scale book. All handmade and all the old adages, don’t judge a book by it’s cover and then these kids in detention! The Princess, The Athlete, The Brain, The Criminal, and The Basket Case each become open books with each other even though they are worlds apart at the beginning of the classic (albeit a few too trite moments and a disturbing #metoo scene) 80's movie. 

The full scale book is made of vintage newspaper printer plates, metal straps, and heavily rusted steel plates evoking a leather bound book. The scene is set within a high school library and is part of my six miniature vignettes based on library scenes in film, literature and television series. 

Each student in detention is represented by items left behind on the desks or the empty chairs. Claire, The Princess, with a bento box lunch; Andrew, The Athlete, with a letter jacket from Sherman High School; Brian, The Brain, with a stack of books spilling out of a backpack; Allison, The Basket Case, with her drawing of a covered bridge in winter; and John Bender, The Criminal, with his knife and pocket chain. The library sculpture (in the movie, called "Standing Figure: Knife Edge" by Henry Moore) is represented in miniature and made by combining different sized cast steel fence finials.

20" wide x 17" deep x 11.5" tall. 2019.
 

These stacked vignettes are inspired by H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel and visually from the movie adaptations of the same name. Each is housed in a vintage card catalog drawer except the top scene in which represents the time traveller’s laboratory. The scene of the Eloi in the original movie, filmed in 1960 at MGM in California even though it was set in London. The modern remake from 2002 has a scene when George is walking in front of the New York Public Library’s steps and the lions. The story has many levels (literally) – the haves and the have-nots – the above ground people are delicate and lounge around with not a care in the world (except at night) and eventually he learns about the below ground workers who make the world above work. George invites friends and colleagues over for dinner but he isn’t there when they gather at his home. He has travelled to the year 802,701 and meets the Eloi. He asked if they have books so he can learn about them. As the others lounge about outside, a small woman guides him into the large building– a shell of a former library. Hoping to learn about these people of the far future, he pulls a book from the shelf. As he opens the book, it disintegrates in his hands. He sullenly realizes that, yes, the books do tell all about their history. After going back and forth into time, including a time 30 million years ahead, he returns to his dinner party to tell them about his adventures. They don’t believe him. The housekeeper shows his friend the library – three books are missing. He wants to rebuild the future that he has seen. Is it a time of innocence and complacency or is it so idle and satiated that it has become prey? An ending not as eerie as the Twilight Zone but…

We are in times of book banning and censoring critical thinking. Some are vilifying words and phrases such as social justice, critical theories, and democracy. We have been down this road before, many times. What type of world will we end up with if it is simplified down to function and basic survival.

The New York Library lion, Fortitude, rests atop the miniature scenes representing the various levels down to the Morlocks who make the world run above, made of heavy gears reminiscent of the machinery in the silent movie Metropolis.

15.5" wide x 18" deep x 53" tall. 2019.

Viewers and fellow artists alike are empowered to challenge their preconceived notion of momentous spaces and times. My work beckons viewers to inhabit the look and feel of more hopeful futures which may have been squandered by unjust systems. Paradoxically, a mind finally finds room inside miniature spaces to explore society’s largest questions.

This is the final sculpture in the series of six vignettes inspired by library scenes in film, literature and television. The opening scene within the dome of the Library of Congress, starts zoomed in on Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman) pouring over checkout slips for every White House request since 1971. Piles of checkout requests, the size of card catalog slips, spill out on the desk in front of the two reporters from the Washington Post about to break Nixon's Watergate. the scene slowly pans out and up into the dome. The view of the concentric desks of the main reading room reminded me of the vast "roller coaster" of newspaper conveyor belts. 

24" wide x 13" tall. 2019.