These art works represent an interest in the relationships between real things, their existence as symbols, and the way we use those symbolic meanings in other real objects (potholders and toaster covers) that we can purchase to communicate our own identities. The images are inspired by the disconnect between heroic role models and a widespread contentment with lives spent in pursuit of material accessories to a lifestyle. They are musings on kitsch in the kitchen, on a middle class pretense cross-eyed by the drive to secure itself, of what one must think of a chicken before covering a toaster with a chicken-shaped "cozy".

All of the photo-based images are monotype transfers of ink jet prints, most of them produced from my own photos. Each is set in context with symbols and patterns drawn in traditional media, usually gouache or graphite; often silhouettes of an animal-shaped object's real-world animal counterpart. Those two elements, image and pattern, initiate a dialogue between object and symbol. And, even with the photos and digital media, I think of them as drawings – in one sense of that discourse – in that they aim to be the simplest, most direct expressions of an idea. They speak of how we became who we are, laugh a little, then hop back up on the riding mower and just guess it'll all work itself out somehow…