My collage construction continues until I see something true and sometimes it happens fast. Despite my lack of conscious intention, I feel myself to be assembling jigsaw puzzles, just without knowing the ultimate image. There's magnetism and revelation in the making: A scrap of paper saved decades ago inexplicably rises to the table top demanding to be included. I often compare the process to water-witching with myself as diviner, hovering images above one another, waiting for elements to be drawn together irresistibly, reunited despite never having met. I am a big believer in the power of simple juxtaposition, that indispensable word without a synonym, and its power to startle, subvert, make me laugh.
I favor certain categories of images: antique views of the cosmos and natural world, painted drapery, medieval and Renaissance figures, illustrations from century-old visual encyclopediae of world history, maps, science, buildings and machinery. I marry them with commercial and photographic images from the time of my childhood and the shocks of today, in an ongoing bid to find balance, to make sense of non-sense.