After many years focusing on human and animal figures in my sculptures and drawings, I find myself creating non-representational objects and images. In letting go of the figure I focus even more deliberately and carefully on the ways that line, shape, color, pattern, and texture relate and sing together, without relying on faces or bodies or other representational elements which themselves create meaning. My thoughts, conscious and unconscious, become images most directly through drawing, and it is my intention to capture the energy of the drawings in my wood and mixed-media sculptures. I work primarily with scraps of wood discarded by cabinetmakers and architectural woodworkers, and with wood scavenged from here and there. I usually work directly from drawings I have made in pen, acrylic ink, and/or charcoal, but sometimes begin new objects as I move around the studio arranging wood shapes and colors, being surprised by ideas that suddenly emerge, building wordless stories without dictating the plots. I have not abandoned the figure altogether in my work, and I find that when needed it may appear again, expanded upon, and informed by my adventures into abstract forms. I am making objects that seem to me beautiful and harmonious, with disruptive potential.