In the fall of 1972 I was required to read Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" as an "atmosphere setter" for a seminar on artists of the westward expansion in the United States. When I first started making drawings of some of the Indian leaders, I had no idea of doing a series. I also had no idea that Indians and more especially those of the West, would be consuming so much of my time and thoughts for such a long period. In the beginning the drawings were prompted by a fascination with the bone structure of the Indian faces. The high cheekbones, the prominent noses and unusual eyes caused marvelous patterns of light and dark, making the faces very conducive to caricature. As I began to know these faces as individuals and personalities, however, I knew that caricature was not the direction which i wanted to pursue.

I resolved to consciously examine the role of precise and spontaneous aspects of my drawings as my creative project. I felt that an investigation into the use of precise and spontaneous elements and their relationship to each other would strengthen my understanding of my own work.

The abstract expressionist movement aided in the development of this new personality for the clay world. An entire new dimension was added with extreme manipulation of ceramic pieces. My work reflects feelings and ideas concerning today's society and the status-quo. Common, everyday images recur in my art objects, with a major interest in cars, food, slogans, and puns. These are all a part of the hysteria of the American scene today.

My work is based upon the photographic image and deals with the juxtaposition of abstract elements within a figurative format. The camera and the photograph have become my sketch book and, as such, seem to influence the manner in which I approach and compose my prints and drawings.

Three intaglio prints and three drawings will be investigated to answer three specific questions. The questions are: 1. Is it possible to isolate the source of subject matter in my work? 2. What effect do media and subject matter have on each other during image development? and 3. Does my subject matter contained in an entire work contribute to the subject matter of my later works?

This problem concerns the production of large scale ceramic sculpture and its affect on the working method of the artist. Traditionally, western ceramics deals with functional pieces of a personal scale, that is smaller ceramic works which serve specific utilitarian purposes. The concepts of clay as an art medium and the studio-potter have developed over only the last 125 years of western ceramic history.

This project is an investigation into the sources of sustained, thematically related images through a series of drawings, prints, photographs and sculpture. Because I have always worked best when I have hit upon an image or set of images of considerable symbolic depth, and because I have generally found such images intuitively, a major portion of this project is to determine if such images can be discovered more consciously.