I am a collector of objects. On neighborhood walks, on the beach, in junk shops and flea markets my eyes snap to objects with qualities that transcend their physical selves. They need not be beautiful or valuable. Each one reaches some part of me that goes beyond aesthetic attraction, an intangible recognition that gives an urgent quality to our interaction. A stone that seems to distill an essence, an old game piece faded from use, discarded pieces from an iron smith, a weathered twig. Such objects surround me in my studio, they are my sculptural medium.

Images emerge, often triggered by the shape of a single object. An old ax head, for example. I see it primarily for its abstract self, with a certain color and texture, and in a certain position. Intuitively I join it with other objects. In my mind’s eye they float weightlessly, they dance their parts, turning, touching, sometimes merging. Then, in a moment of spontaneous knowing I see the resolution, I realize total satisfaction and from then on the composition can be no other. The box constructed around the composition frames the image and defines its architectural space. Skylights and windows, most often made of mica, break down barriers between interior and exterior spaces.

Sometimes an object triggers a memory or personal narrative, which I recall symbolically through a juxtaposition of objects. At other times I wish to suggest an enigmatic question, or create an ironic, playful image. Recent work often reflects my travels in Japan where I absorbed the spaces and forms of Japanese gardens and temples, and studied the contemporary architectural works of Tadao Ando. In each case my sculptural response is an intimate reflection, a way to represent my response to experience.

Uniting all my images is an expression of quiet, a meditative stillness that comes from within. They can be seen as pauses in the rapid pace of the lives we lead, like the little roadside shrines one finds everywhere in Japan. My sculptures are small in scale and hung at eye level so that viewing them is at close range and by necessity a solo experience. I hope they breathe quietly, and gently invite the viewer to personal sanctuary.

I begin to understand when the small sculpture is mounted in its box, when it is as precisely rendered as she has imagined it—the moment when that last little something knocked against the inventory she was holding in her head. Art happened right then. As for me, I stand by slack-jawed.

These small squibs I fire back at Margo only can come to life in response to her images. This method is foreign to the way I have always worked, having always run my own mischievous show, having drawn only one hard line in my life, that between what I know to be fact and that I which allow to flow freely—fiction.

Both Plato and Mr. Dewey Decimal agree that poetry is fiction, and so, provided these might be construed as poems, what I offer here is fiction, fiction with some laid down lines of triangulation. One, the most significant of course, is the sculpture that Margo offers me as a starting point.

Space can be a problem. Those sculptures whose junky accumilants suggest elements of story right before my eyes are easier to open into. Those which have been influenced by Margo’s visit to Japan, the Tenruji and Naoshima series, are more fully explorations of the positive and negative space within the boxes. Often, they invite the eye to move into areas not quite available from whatever angle a person may look. What is back there? For me, the problem of space must be translated.

If space, then time; if faith, then doubt; if heaviness, then heavier still; if hope, then maybe I can reluctantly muster up a companionable bit of hope.

Often I am amazed at what Margo makes me see. Amazement may be only a more joyful way of being stumped. I carry images—rusty wrenches, sticks and bits of string—in my head for weeks. Finally, I say, well, if that...then this. It would be impossible to replicate Margo’s gestures even if I were to try. What I have is words.

If that, then this.