I think of my art-making as a kind of research or exploration. The pictures and objects that result are secondary to entering into a process of discovery. I always hope to emerge renewed - and with a little something to share. I return often to consideration of the fact that both Nature and Culture seem to oscillate between structure and deformation, melody and static: accidents seem to have a purpose... Not Your Mother's Rococo is a print series that combines research and play. It was born out of a larger, ongoing project I call Dans la Nature, l'Ecriture which seeks to reveal structures and calligraphic markings routinely overlooked and often trampled underfoot. It's simply about seeing things in a different way. This research began while walking and drawing in the mountains and village environs of the French Pyrenees. Soon, I began taking photographs along the way, just as a documentary record. The Not Your Mother's Rococo prints available here with Artsicle are the latest step in the process. Through all-out digital manipulation, the photographs shed resemblance to typical representations of Nature. To my eye, they suggest a direct experience of shape, color and line. Where the original photo may be boringly prosaic, the manipulated result is far from it. I've come to enjoy them as a kind of wickedly perverse Rococo - in which chintz is overwhelmed by chantz. (ouch) As for Culture: my extensive photographic archive serves as the picture-library of I Don't Want To Get Too Sentimental, an image/text narrative in which seeing and thinking run on parallel tracks. <b>When</b> or <b>where</b> a picture was taken is not important in this work, nor is <b>who</b> a person pictured may be. The past is folded into the present; place is relative; personal identity dissipates into the anonymous. Meaning comes and goes, truth is illusive, and expectations are not very useful. Just like real life. Created in counterpoint to I Don't Want To Get Too Sentimental are the Permissible Artifacts, a group of assemblages incorporating raw pigment and stainless steel with materials ranging from computer chips to the remnants of found objects. As we are drowning these days in a nearly overwhelming tsunami of information and imagery, I am reassured by good, old solid stuff that you can grab onto and hold. If they floated, it would be even better...