As an art school undergraduate in the late 1960’s, I studied Duchamp’s philosophy and Readymades with great interest. After moving to New Mexico in 1970, I felt free to incorporate some of his approaches into my practice. Rather than appropriating manufactured Readymades as he had, I chose to directly record and repurpose common samples from our high desert landscape into my installations.

 

Like Duchamp’s monumental art paradigm shift of 1914, some 50 years later “environmental” artists such as Sonfist, Heizer, Turrell, Smithson and Holt were exploring other new postmodern directions— with equally profound implications. Working directly in the landscape to create interactive works was to me an attractive and effective approach.

 

Having been newly awakened by the amazing light and earth/sky phenomena of New Mexico, and to the impending destruction of habitable Earth by commercial exploitation, my approach was to present the natural world in a new context for the viewer to appreciate. Many of the castings have been shown aligned as markers for celestial—particularly solar—systems, to help actualize our place in space and time. And since most of the direct (negative) castings are exact opposites of perceived reality, I imagine viewers identifying with, and becoming the Earth, looking up and outward to our star and the universe beyond.