I made this piece in January, 2010, thinking about the concept of Janus as the Roman god of beginnings, and the fact that a single figure can look both forward and back. The turning of the year encourages this kind of two-way gazing. I felt acutely aware of 2009 having been a rough year on many fronts. Beginning a new year brings associations of possibility, positive things, a fresh start. The interior baby represents this vulnerable, blank slate feeling. The concept of Inside/Out fascinates me -- the glimpses we get into what is normally unseeable and mysterious. The openness of the piece reflects this. The fact that it was January when I started this work was a factor: all the bare branches, the skeletal landscape, where you see through a lattice-work of stripped winter aspens and cottonwoods. I didn’t want to enclose the baby in a cage, or a jail cell with bars, so I found myself picturing the decorative, carved wooden screens of Moorish culture in Spain or Moghul culture in India.

Deer, in contrast to lions, are intensely vulnerable, but in making this sculpture I was not thinking of the opposition between predator and prey. I was thinking more in terms of the responses these two very different species evoke in us. That’s why both the deer and the lions have human eyes. It’s that feeling, again, that there is really no “Other” -- that W.B. Yeats idea that we all share the same roots. The deer feels like a gentle reliquary for the two inner figures, a peaceful container for their relationship. This exterior housing protects what’s inside not in a watch-dog way, but in a soft, nurturing way, comparable to the way a pregnant woman contains and sustains the life inside herself simply “by nature,” without effort or thought.

With the lion sculptures I wanted to continue to experiment with this concept of mysterious glimpses of the interior. I feel a deep connection to Roman art. I studied in Italy during college years and have visited several times since. A 2006 trip with my family had been simmering inside me. Having photographed some of those stately Etruscan lions, I wanted to work with lions in the way these archetypal images do, staying clear of a “realistic” African-Safari-type lion.

As with the Janus figure, you have to take time to begin to see what’s going going on. The piece is instructive in a way: in order to see into it the viewer has to slow down, change their angle of vision, hope for the right kind of light, then ponder what they’ve merely glimpsed.

Another concept that motivated these pieces: in looking at someone we really have no idea what they are experiencing internally. We make assumptions, but what they’re actually going through is often, perhaps usually, very different from what we imagine. This is why empathy strikes me as the best reaction we can have toward others -- and judgment perhaps the worst. Things are not always as they seem.

At another level the lions are a continuation of the running narrative, in all my work, that everything is connected, that there is no “Other”, that we are all made of the same substances and all dependent upon the same elemental forces. What takes care of a lion takes care of a human. Male lions are perhaps the most common archetype of strength, pride, masculinity. But they are as dependent upon the health of a greater living world, and of interior mystery, as you or me. So on the lion’s interior is this totally serene, glowing, bodhisattva-like figure -- a contrast between the lion’s physicality and something just as essential, but more mysterious and sublime.

Honeycomb pieces are a continuation of a series I began years ago. In studying the paper wasp nests on the outside of my studio and barn I grew fascinated by the great variety of forms. The sculptures these insects build to house their young felt to me like little 3-D creation myths.

After a series of wasp nest pieces I wanted to create something more juicy and alive, so I started working with honeycomb. The first such piece I made was a portrait of my then thirteen-year old daughter as she was coming into full adolescent bloom. The honeycomb portrayed the sensuousness of this in a very natural way. Another quality I enjoy about these pieces is the way beeswax adds the feel and fragrance of the natural material I’m referencing.

Here in Montana, I drive daily down a road that’s got honeybee boxes in the meadows, surrounded by trees. In the evenings, deer come out in the same glades to graze near the boxes as the bees keep swarming out to seek the wildflowers and mock orange that blossom this time of year.

The influences for this piece were the classical feel of Roman sculpture, and the fact that my oldest daughter was entering college, leaving my younger daughter behind at home. As with the Janus piece, they are back to back -- still joined -- but headed in opposite directions, on their own trajectories.