Wood, scrap metal, nails
22” x 60”

The Golem, in Jewish folklore, was an artificial being created by a rabbi out of mud and brought to life through some kind of mystic divination. But things didn’t work out. The golem had to be destroyed. There are many variations and interpretations of the tale, but the general theme involves the hubris of man playing God, which always leads to trouble.

For those with a detailed memory of 20th century art, this piece references the Falling Man sculptures of the Pop Artist Ernest Trova. The reference is both deliberate and personal. My father had a professional relationship with Trova and the artistic careers of both men eventually came to disappointing endings.

$8000

Wood, paint
67” x 48”

Several few years ago I saw this form in a vivid dream. I had no idea what it might mean. Since it looks like a comb, I thought it had something to do with searching, sifting, probing in a deeply unconscious way. Recently, I had another dream wherein I realized that it’s a search engine, a device that sifts (combs) through an incomprehensible tangle of information for what is meaningful and or relevant to a particular person or group of people. When our remote ancestors looked at the stars, they couldn’t help but use their search-comb to find pictures, look for omens, and postulate deities. We can’t help but look for patterns and order in nature. That’s different for various groups of people. Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, Humanists, Physicists, Anthropologists, Atheists, etc. It’s an attempt to grapple with staggering complexities and the unknowable mechanisms of Nature. In further research, I found that this rune-like shape has been found in some of the oldest cave paintings on earth, in multiple places.* There’s something to that. That’s some heavy lifting for that piece to take on, but it’s pretty imposing at 6-feet across.

$5000

*Huenul Cave, Patagonia, 6000 BCE (Image via Science Advances (2024). Image credit Guadalupe Romero Villanueva.)

Wood, metal, paint
22” x 36”
(Gk. aperio, to uncover, make or lay bare)

The-eye-for-an-eye thing seems to be a popular concept these days…referring to Hammurabi’s three-thousand-year-old code as justification for retaliation, retribution, or punishment. But the book of Exodus cites Hammurabi’s directive as a restriction against excessive retaliation for personal injury…as in don’t take any more than an eye for an eye. In the New Testament, Jesus recommends forgoing the harsh maxim and turning the other cheek instead. Gandhi puts a memorable twist on it by pointing out that, “An eye for and eye will only make the whole world blind.”

$2000

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Wood, paint, metal
18” x 36”

A giant wound in the fabric of humanity. The 13,000 hashmarks on the back side starkly illustrate the Palestinian (and Israeli) children—only children—who died gruesome deaths between October 7, 2023 and March 19, 2024. Since then that total has increased by thousands. It’s hard to imagine anything good could come from such pain and sorrow. It’s easy to despair that the world will continue to tolerate such tragedies.

$3000

Wood, paint
22” x 36”

This anecdote about the Sufi poet Rumi, currently infuses all of my work:

I said: What about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it.
I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

― Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi, 1207-1273 CE

$1600

Wood, paint
14.5” x 5.5” x 7”

During the Edo period in Japan (1603-1867) ukiyo meant “floating world,” a reference to the pleasure-seeking pursuits of a popular urban lifestyle and culture. Long before that, ukiyo was Buddhist term describing the transitory nature of life. In its modern usage, the term ukiyo is used to refer to a state of mind emphasizing living in the moment, detached from the difficulties of life. This sculpture traffics in all of the above.

NFS

Wood, metal, paint
24” x 10” x 17”

For most of human history, grottoes have been experienced as places of refuge, portals to another dimension, and/or sites of reverence. Often associated with springs or water, they’ve often been credited with powers of healing. In the grand spectacle of Altamira, the mystical power of Delphi, the revered sanctuary of Lourdes, and even the simple kitsch of the backyard shrine, grottoes carry the imagination to both inward and upward at the same time…looking to be comforted.

This baroque cloak of burl—gleaned from a damp woods—has nothing miraculous associated with it other than its survival through centuries of growth, weather, disease, death, and decay.

The apparition that led to it recovery and reverential status was of nothing other than itself…the smallest of miracles in world filled with miracles.

$1500

Wood, paint
12” x 7” x 37”

A deliberate reference to the “wood of the cross” was unavoidable with this elegant splinter/spire that directs our attention to the stars. Monasteries and cathedrals have been built, crusades have been launched, and pilgrimages have been made by people who believe they’re in the presence of scrap of the apparatus that was used to end another human being’s life. More often than not the provenance of such shards is questionable, but it’s possible that a few of them are what they are purported to be. Venerated as relics they are usually encrusted with jewels and gilded with gold. Perhaps there should be such and object for every person whose life has been unjustly and/or prematurely ended.

$1000

Approx: 44” x 18” x 12”
Salvaged trunk, found metal, wire

And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him. (I Samuel 16:23)

Created from a tree trunk left over from the 2011 tornado that devastated North Minneapolis. The world has a way of beating things down. Despair is a reasonable response. Fortunately, there are balms for what ails us. If we are willing to open up a little and listen.

$1700

Linden branch, wood
96" x 7" x 7"

$8000

60” x 26” x 22”
Wood, paint

According to Greek mythology, Prometheus gifted humanity with fire stolen from the gods. As a punishment he was staked to a mountainside where an eagle visited daily to dine on his liver, which then repaired itself by the next day. The Greeks believed the liver was the seat of human emotion, so this was a particularly acute form of torture. There is also a lot of hope in the story reflected in the daily resurrection.

Prometheus’s gift allowed human beings to aspire to a higher standard of living through knowledge (science) and to strive to reach our true potential (enlightenment). Prometheus represents a combination of the joy of understanding and the angst of the price paid to acquire it. But we keep at it, daily, as flickering reflections of the fire. In this sculpture, two distinct lobes rise to where they gently reconnect…the nexus of the rational and the emotive. Our wholeness.

$3500

Approx: 72” x 18” x 12’
Salvaged tree, found metal parts, wire

Shards of the world as we know it—suspended in the emptiness between the vast walls of night—tumbling, rising, floating. Disintegration is inevitable. But aren’t we already just scraps of matter and being adrift in an unfathomable universe? We keep ourselves occupied by chasing dreams, which are often elusive and at best temporary. Then everything ends no matter what we’ve achieved or wished for. There’s no reason to think that’s a bad thing. Unless we suffer the delusion that we are the be-all and end-all.

$3000

Wood, paint, nails
11” x 34” x 11”

Idioms about radiance abound with joyful associations—beaming with pride; a healthy glow; a sunny disposition; radiating joy; in glowing terms. Anyone who has spent too much time at the beach or had to endure radiation therapy can tell you that exposure to pure electromagnetic energy can also be difficult to endure.

$800

Plaster, wood, paint
7” x 13” x 8”

It’s hard not to project modern sensibilities onto the life of this once infamous and long-forgotten Pharaoh. What we do know is that he upended the orthodox religious/political polytheism of his day in favor of a sleeker paradigm that foreshadowed the idea of monotheism. After his death he became a pariah, his ideas became anathema, his memory was all but erased, and his name and image purged from all monuments.

Maybe he was motivated by political ambition to become an iconoclast, or maybe he was simply millennia ahead of his time. Although he had been granted the power of a god in his world, it’s likely that he was a thoughtful human being who had an inkling of the light that lay beyond the prevalent obfuscations of his day and decided he could push things along.

$700

49” x 39”
Wood panel, paint, wire

Most opinions about Charles Darwin are based on second-hand propaganda, for and/or against. It is a pity that more people don’t get to know him through his own words. The account of the voyage of the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836 is a remarkable and under-appreciated work of literature that reveals a man of general curiosity, focused insight, incredible stamina, and deep humility. The texts imprinted on this piece are direct quotes from the second publication of his journal in 1845 (“Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world.”)

This was the first of many delightful days never to be forgotten;

everything was motionless excepting the large and brilliant butterflies.

It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes;

it is not possible for me to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder astonishment and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.

The seamen cried out it is snowing butterflies!

There appears to be some more mysterious agency generally at work.

It is the fashion and that is sufficient answer at Tahiti as well as Paris.

No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved and not feel that there is more in man than

the mere breath of his body.

$3500

Approx. 12”x 12”x 37”
Wood, nails, wire, paint

This pedestal with a golden bowl at its crown bespeaks a baptismal font, but is inspired by the following poem by Jalaladin Rumi (1207-1273):

A story is like water that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire and your skin. It lets them meet, and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down in the middle of the fire itself like a salamander or Abraham. We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes, but it usually takes some bread to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us, but we usually need to be walking in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal the light that’s blazing in your presence.

Water stories, the body, all the things we do, are mediums that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them, and enjoy this being washed with a secret we sometimes know, and then not.

$3500

Approx. 22x 22”x 30”
Pine slabs joined by metal rods

My neighbor’s Dad, Tom Machacek, brought these beautiful chunks of pine left over from building his cabin. I inscribed two opposing end panels with poems from Rumi and Robert Bly…a conversation across time and space, but not the least bit remote from each other.

NOT A DAY ON ANY CALENDAR (Rumi)
Spring, and everything outside is growing, even the tall cypress tree. We must not leave this place. Around the lip of the cup we share, these words, “My Life Is Not Mine.” If someone were to play music, it would have to be very sweet. We’re drinking wine, but not through lips. We’re sleeping it off, but not in bed. Rub the cup across your forehead. This day outside is living and dying. Give up wanting what other people have. That way you’re safe. “Where, where can I be safe?” you ask. This is not a day for asking questions, not a day on any calendar. This day is conscious of itself. This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness, more manifest than saying can say. Thoughts take form with words, but this daylight is beyond and before thinking and imagining. Those two, they are so thirsty, but this gives smoothness to water. Their mouths are dry, and they are tired. The rest of this poem is too blurry to read.

STORY WATER (Rumi)
The body itself is a screen To shield and partially reveal The light that’s blazing Inside your presence Water, stories, the body, All the things we do, are mediums That hide and show what’s hidden. Study them, And enjoy this being washed With a secret we sometimes know, And then not.

A DAY ALONE (Bly)
My friend, this body is made of camphor and gopherwood. Where it goes, we follow, even into the Ark. As the light comes in sideways from the west over damp spring buds and winter trash, the body comes out hesitatingly, and we are shaken, we weep, how is it that we feel no one has ever loved us? The protective lamplit left hand hovering over its own shadow on the page seems more loved than we are….And when we step into a room where we expect to find someone, we walk all the way over the floor and feel the bed…. WE

LOVE THIS BODY (Bly)
My friend, this boy is made of energy compacted and whirling. It is the wind that carries the henhouse down the road dancing, and an instant later lifts all four walls apart. It is the horny thumbnail of the retired railway baron, over which his children skate on Sunday, it is the forehead bone that does not rot, the woman priest’s hair still fresh among Shang ritual things…. We love this body as we love the day we first met the person who led us away from the world, as we love the gift we gave one morning on impulse, in a fraction of a second, that we still see every day, as we love the human face, fresh after love making, more full of joy than a wagonload of hay.

$3000

Approx. 28” x 18” x 10”
Cedar logs and metal rods

“Impenetrable” could be about barriers—in culture, society, and self. It evinces the stockades that were used to fortify the American frontier from Jamestown through the Manifest Destiny. The recent surge in social strife is a reminder that as long as we continue to put up walls between ourselves and those we fear or do not understand, we will continue to languish in a state of tension and conflict. In a personal way, we put up the same kind of barriers, based on our inner anxieties and conflicts, that keep us from living in harmony with the world...from being authentically free. OR…it could be about shelter, sanctuary…that which keeps us safe. My son asks, “Which side is IN and which side is OUT?” I don’t know. Good question.

$3500

15” x 15” x 65”
Wood, metal, wire, nails, paint

Every branch of science and every religion agree that human beings will not endure. It’s fashionable now to think of that inevitability as sooner rather than later. Yet some memory will be left behind. What will that look like?

ATCATADGTADTAAATTTTAATTGADDTT
DCCAGGATTGAGCTGCCAATTAGAT…?
010010110100100101000010011011010101
1111101001110000001101010011010000…?

$2500

BREVIARY (for a Winter Day)
Wood, clay, nails
11” x 11” panels

Following the traditional canonical hours, this eight-panel sequence chronicles a single February day in 2002…contrasting quotidian and cosmic phenomenon.

MATINS
An incubus hunched upon a night stand
LAUDS
A wound from which the continents fleet
PRIME
God bless the quiet moon rocks disturbed
TERCE
Solar flares lashing back, steam rises
SEXT
Caffeinated zombies stare, a disembodied voice
NONES
The river never stops beneath thick slabs of ice
VESPERS
Clustered galaxies churning, Doppler echoes
COMPLINES
Swathed in radiant blue, swallowing each and every holy hour

$500 (per panel)

Approx. 20” x 20”
Wood, clay, antique nails

Memento Mori (remember you will die), has a long tradition in Western Art. While much of my work is part of the genre, these four plaques of remembrance are my most deliberate reference. The titles refers both to our individual human experience—from cradle to grave—and also to our entire civilization, which we should realize is no more permanent than any of those which preceded us.
• Once Upon a Time
• Happily Ever After
• All That We Leave Behind
• Please Remember We Were Here

NFS

21”x15”x91”
Salvaged column and wood plank, wire, paint

Western Civilization –as all of its predecessors– has been built with the labor of slaves, no where more so than in America. The humble plank embedded into this Corinthian column was salvaged from a barn in Southern Missouri that predated the Civil War.

Inspiration for this piece was from two artifacts in the Diane & Alan Page Collection: A slave-made brick from the White House and a slave-made hoe from a southern plantation.

The Diane and Alan Page Collection is a selection of art, artifacts and memorabilia that paints a portrait of race relations and representation in the 19th through 21st centuries.

$6000

Approx. 20”x 20”x 116”
Wood, metal, wire, paint

Suleiman Bakhit (1978-2019), named after Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), was an entrepreneur who produced superhero comics for Arab youth…”fighting to change how the West sees Arab youth — and how Arab youth see themselves.” For his bravery he was twice scarred by vicious attacks — once in the U.S. and once in his native Jordan. He bore his scars as badges of honor, quoting Rumi: “The wound is where the light enters you.”

$7500

26”x 28”x 46”
Salvaged antique beam, metal pipe, wire

The fire that damaged the renowned cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris on April 15, 2019 traumatized the world as it burned from the inside out. The beam in this piece –mortised, tenoned and pegged by hand– was salvaged from an ancient structure in Altenburg, Missouri, likewise hollowed out by fire.

$2800

Staff, paint, nails
11” x 48”

In Jerome’s translation of the Bible (Vulgate), he says that when Moses descended from Sinai, “his face was horned,” or “spiked.” Other translations use words like shone, rays, glorified, or that he was beaming with ecstasy. The idea is that he was radiating the glory of Yahweh. But I like the idea of horns. So did Michelangelo, which is why his sculpture has literal horns. I always thought that exposure to God would be somewhat painful to bear.

$1600

Approx. 16” x 16”x 5”
Salvaged wood

Despite the havoc it has wreaked on our planet the corona virus is rather striking in its appearance. Corona means crown, a fitting metaphor for the this dark overlord, Covid19. But corona is also the word used to describe the ring of ghostly light that appears during the darkest part of a total eclipse.

$650

Approx: 12” x 7” x 9”
Ash, glue

Amidst the pandemic (disease everywhere) there was also pandemonium (evil everywhere). Watching my city lit up by flames was like watching a volcanic eruption…fire, chaos, destruction, then an ash cloud circling the earth. I can imagine the last words of many of the victims of Vesuvius must have been, “I can’t breathe.” Though the chaos manifests on our city streets, what’s really wrong is within our heads.

NFS

Approx. 30”x 16”x 52”
Salvaged beam, metal pipe, wire

Opelousas is a city in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, where three black Baptist churches were burned the week before the fire at Notre Dame. The beam used in this piece was salvaged from an very old building in southern Missouri.

$1400

Approx. 15”x 20”x 94”
Salvaged tree, upright piano mechanism, wire

A log salvaged from Brownie Lake in Minneapolis, combined with a piano that was in the family of Karolyn Jane Root of St. Paul for sixty-five years.

charred tones rise
from an ivory bone

fire a melancholy song
unfurls into a long

September sky
from a piano pyre

$7500

Appox: 14” x 14” x 28”
Wood, metal

A mytheme that exists in most of the major religions talks about a tree that connects the heavens and the underworld, usually linked to immortality. I imagine it’s pretty stripped down these days.

$800

Approx. 12” x 28” x 4”
Wood, metal, bone

Ark: Middle English, from Old English arc, from Latin arca, chest; akin to Latin arcēre to hold off, defend, Greek, arkein, Hittite ḫark , to have, hold.

As a child, I always wondered why the same word was used for Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant. Now I know.  It’s about what matters most. Something we need now more than ever.

$700

Approx. 9”x 8”x 28”
Wood, paint

$700

Approx. 28” x 36”
Scourged and charred pine

Tabula rasa is the theory that we are born without ineherent mental content—a blank slate—and that we acquire knowledge, our personalities, and our social behaviors from experience and perception. However, the newly discovered effects of epigenetics suggest that our slates may come loaded up with quite a bit of calligraphy.

$1200

Approx. 9”x 6”x 37”
Wood, paint, bird nests

$1200

Approx: 28” x 14” x 12”

Hewn with an axe or chewed by a beaver? The evidence is plain to see if we use a discerning eye. Something in rare supply these days.

$600

Approx: 12” x 12” x 14”
Buckthorn, nails, hand-forged nails

Pieta (Lat. piety or compassion) refers to a sorrowful Mary cradling and contemplating her dead son.

While the world has preferred to focus on the casual violence of George Floyd’s death, I can’t shake the memory of how he called out to his mother as he was dying…as if he expected to be taken into her arms.

$700

Approx. 10”x 10”x 17”
Wood, wire, nails, paint

$700

Appox. 6”x 8”x 27”
Wood, paint

SOLD

20”x 18”x 84”
Salvaged log, 19th century roofing tiles, wire

The clay tiles suspended in this husk were made over a century and a half ago by my great-great-great grandfather for log cabins built in and around the town of Altenburg, Missouri. The log, which was probably a living tree during the time of tile-maker, was salvaged from a local farm.

Clay tiles courtesy of the Perry County Lutheran Heritage Society.

$4000

Approx. 58” x16” x 18”
Salvaged tree stump, metal spikes, wire

The martyred saint is most often depicted skewered with arrows, but few people realize that he survived that ordeal and had to be re-martyred by Diocletian. It’s hard to determine if the traditional images are depicting pain or rapture. The same can be said for this cedar tree that further twisted and split when I pulled it out of Brownie Lake in Minneapolis.

$3500

Approx. 54” x 12” x18”
Steeple splinters, metal parts, antique nails

After a 2009 windstorm toppled the steeple of Trinity Church in Altenburg, Missouri I was given three large splinters salvaged from the fallen detritus. The splinters are impaled with 650 hand-forged nails one for each of a group of Saxon Lutherans that emigrated to Perry County in 1839.

Now in the collection of the Lutheran Heritage Museum in Altenburg, Missouri.

NFS

Approx. 60” x 12” x18 ”
Salvaged tree root, wire, found metal

This bone-like root was extracted from an immense pile of bleached wood wedged up against the old bridge across the Des Moines River in St. Francisville, Missouri.

$3000