Unvanquished

...nearly completed claywork for Unvanquished began in April of this year in the Loire Valley in France . I started researching for this just after my last showing of Requiem for the Pawns of War when I met a Canadian researcher with the Alberta Council of Women's Studies. She gave me a quick overview of the magnitude and severity of the problem. I was immediately interested in getting involved. When I told Kate of my interest in pursuing this further she asked if I wanted to look at homicides or suicides. Whatever I was about to say stuck in my throat as I absorbed the magnitude of her question. This piece came to be as a collaborative effort with my model and Martine Vaugel, a phenomenally supportive and talented being who has supported me whole-heartedly in manifesting my artistic vision.

Thin BLue Line-Domestic Violence

Have been working on a new piece called Thin Blue Line-Black Eyed Madonna. Initial interviews have been done and after speaking to counselors at The Network for Sexual Violence it seemed that the crux of the problem centers around "control". I don't know that I am in agreement with this yet as I look at line drawings of children that they use to indicate where someone touched them inappropriately or worse.
Control has now taken on a new meaning with sinister overtones. One doesn't think of control as a bad thing when operating a car or plane or a nuclear reactor or when walking your child across the street but in a relationship look out it is a veritable minefield.
Control in a relationship has driven many off the brink more often than any other element. This bad control then starts one down the slippery slope into the cauldron of blame and regret. I think this is the direction my studies are beginning to take me.

Iraq Body Count-Requiem for the Pawns of War

When I created Requiem for the Pawns of War, one of sources of inspiration came from listening to conversations in a doctor's lounge at one of my hospitals. How can so many people who have presumably sworn themselves to helping others be so willing to bomb the undeserving or even fail to question if there ever is a justification for bombing? Now so much time has elapsed that the same parties all sit in front of the tv screen and watch the latest Paris Hilton Crisis without giving a second thought to the people who have their electricity rationed and have to live with their own people bursting into flames and nails which will take out another 10 or 30 of the undeserving. Our own children there have to relive now the lessons from other conflicts and come back home scarred and silent or angry and knotted up as they walk our streets with images carried home from another country like a mental virus waiting to infect their lives.

Let's keep the reasons for this invasion alive and look at what we have been told. The longer it goes on the more we become numb and accustomed to conflict. Can you believe there was a Hundred Years War at one time?

Thanks
Zen