This thesis presents a body of work that acknowledges Rural American landscape and the importance of its conservation. This conservation is not restricted to recognizing the rural landscape as strictly a natural resource, rather, a spiritual place that fosters a positive side of humanity.

The challenge of this project was to present subject matter in a way that did not seem common to the viewer. With this goal in mind, I aimed to switch the traditional roles of material and form in order to aesthetically elevate the commonplace. For my proposed project I combined traditional sculptural materials and processes with commonplace subject matter. I took a chance at the beginning of this project by making something that I had been joking about until I realized that this might be an interesting piece. From this point on I made a conscious effort to make whatever popped in my head. Although I am not a literary person, it seems that with this body of work I backed into what I might call "ironical metaphor."

I look at the world as a sculptor, examining physical constructs and implied meanings. My current research developed from my earlier studies of “containment” or, more specifically, “encapsulation,” creating visual, often physical, boundaries around selected content. Encapsulation confers a more active role than “containment”, a process rather than a result. This idea speaks to the issues of form, and asks the viewer to question the outside “shape of the form” in relation to the inside shape and content. My work focuses on exposed interior spaces and forms, allowing the viewer to enter the space physically as well as mentally and psychologically. Built in a large enough scale, the viewer could actually become the content. The sculpture’s interpretation revolves around the seen as well as the unseen. I built this duality into my work by using transparent and opaque materials. I also implemented small diameter stainless steel rod along with the transparent and opaque vinyl to reduce forms to their respective shapes and volumes. This approach allowed me to clean the “slate” of an object’s collective meaning and context, adapting it to the intent of my work.

The problem I choose dealt with a new material to use in conceptual art. Since the nature of my work deals with ribbed sculptural forms that explore conceptual abstractions of recorded observations, I investigated a new material called composites. A composite is defined as two or more materials that are combined to share the best qualities of both. Laminated foam core, nylon fabric weave, vinyl, and resin composites may introduce an aesthetic and structural advantage to traditional material such as wood and metal. Innovations in laminated composites and methods of joining unfamiliar materials could offer an advantage for these new sculptures. A series of six ribbed sculptural forms were constructed, which consist of laminated composite material relating to personal observations expressed in my journal in the last quarter of the year 2000. The material was introduced in the desire for a cohesive formal relationship between the concepts and the forms. Patron, 2001 Mixed Media, 19"x 8"x 4"; PDQ, 2001 Mixed Media, 10"x 8"x 2"; PDQ2, 2001 Mixed Media, 21"x27"x3"; Bishop, 2001 Mixed Media, 23"x11"x5"; Coaster, 2001 Mixed Media, 14"x12"x9" and Putsch, 2001 Mixed Media, 69"x48"x24".