HOW IT BEGAN:

As a result of regularly kicking back with a glass or two of wine at dinner, empty bottles quickly pile up in the kitchen awaiting their recycling destiny.  If one bothers to look, these shapely bottles are actually quite beautiful.  On a wine-inspired evening, I had the idea of placing a bottle in a sculpture.  The wine-related ideas started flowing and have not stopped since.   By combining the bottles with imaginatively positioned figures, I have discovered a way to whimsically capture the passion for life that wine lovers share.

BE PATIENT, LOTS OF GREAT PHOTOS ARE LOADING!

The Wine Lovers series has resulted in my most distinctive and consistent voice.  Collectors have asked me how I make the faces look so similar.  It is simple - they are all from the same family and drink the same wine.  All joking aside, I am at a loss to explain the kindred faces; however, I attribute the cohesiveness of the series to the repetition of the bottle or wine glass in each work and my strong affinity for the subject matter.  The Napa Valley, America's premier wine region, is less than a two hour drive from my house, so it was not difficult to be bitten by the wine bug.  In fact, I have become particularly enamored with Pinot Noir, the specialty of the wine growing region designated as the Santa Cruz Mountains, the area in which I reside.  There are more than 50 wineries in this rugged mountain range so a series on wine is a natural. 

Most of my ideas emanate from my ceaseless sketching which constitutes phase one of my creative process.  Each brainchild is worked out on a sketch pad well before I begin to sculpt.  When I attempt to go directly to the clay, I am frustrated because every major change requires a restart, including a rebuild of the armature.  On paper, however, anything is instantly possible.  My sketches allow me to quickly experiment with a myriad of options, often drawing from multiple angles to explore all three dimensions. I keep my sketches extremely simple so I can stay focused on the main idea.  I am confident that details will emerge from the clay.  For some pieces, I lay out the sculpture dozens of times on paper, even settling on a name for it, before moving forward.  Others just seem to fall in place requiring only a handful of drawings.  

The sketches, however, are only the beginning of the creative process since a piece often continues to evolve when executed in three dimensions.  Once I start with the clay, I begin phase two.  I use real wine bottles that I have previously enjoyed at the dinner table.  It is like a good friend returning to see me.  With warm clay in one hand and a bottle in the other, the excitement begins.  This is when the imagination kicks in again, the conscious mind backs off, and surprises come out of nowhere.  I will work on a sculpture for hours at a time, searching for the unexpected.   A path will appear to work, prove to be a dead-end, and then I am off in another direction.  This will be repeated for days.   Eventually, I will get to a stopping point where I either love the sculpture (so much so that I do not want to touch it for fear of ruining it), or I hate it (and fiendishly destroy it). 

When I finally have a sculpture that I love, I will place it in an area of the studio which I call purgatory, thus starting phase three.  This area is at the opposite end from where I work, yet remains in my direct line of sight.  The piece will reside there for months.  Without fail, I will begin to see flaws that bother me and cause me to reengage.  I typically have five or six sculptures in purgatory at the same time.   When I start the revisions, I will usually add more detail.  At this stage, the toughest battle is balancing the desire to maintain a roughness that invites imagination with the need to add detail to create interest.  Once detail is added, it is tough to unwind and return to the natural rough look. The three phases combined often consume over six months, at which time I gingerly transport the work to the foundry or sadly end its existence.  For those doomed to destruction, I have a ritual of decapitating the figure and adding the head to a totem pole, a memento of our time together. 

Often a year in the making, the sculpture is delivered to a gallery where it will wait for an art collector to fall in love with it.  I always get a warm feeling when I receive a check in the mail with a note that a gallery sold a sculpture, but it is doubly thrilling when I happen to be at a gallery when a purchase is made.  The many months of labor are validated when I experience a direct connection with a collector, providing all that is needed to send me back to the studio to start all over again.

As a result of regularly kicking back with a glass or two of wine at dinner, empty bottles quickly pile up in the kitchen awaiting their recycling destiny.  If one bothers to look, these shapely bottles are actually quite beautiful.  On a wine-inspired evening, I had the idea of placing a bottle in a sculpture.  The wine-related ideas started flowing and have not stopped since.   By combining the bottles with imaginatively positioned figures, I have discovered a way to whimsically capture the passion for life that wine lovers share.

The trip to the Firebird Foundry in Monterey, California begins phase four.  Taking precisely one hour from my home in Los Gatos, this drive winds through the scenic Santa Cruz mountain range and then by coastal farmland.  Once at the foundry, the time-tested lost-wax process can begin.  It all starts when a multi-part rubber mold is carefully made forming a "negative" of the clay original.  The highly sensitive rubber can pick up minute details such that even a fingerprint can be detected.  Hot molten wax is then poured into the mold forming a wax positive of the figure.  The piece is personally inspected by me at this point and given its unique edition number.  Once approved, a thick ceramic shell is built around the wax and the wax is burned out in a kiln (hence the "lost-wax" process), leaving a perfect negative in the ceramic shell.  The shell is then filled with liquid bronze.  After the bronze cools, the shell is broken off and the metal work begins.  Excess metal is removed, parts are welded together, and sanding, buffing and other detailing is performed.   The sculpture is cleaned, receives a second artist inspection, and then is given a wondrous patina (color) by heating and applying chemicals.  This entire foundry process takes four months on average. I have enormous respect for the team of experts at the foundry and am especially thankful for their patience with my frequent special requests.  

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