ARTIST’S STATEMENTMy six-year-old daughter Emaline hates when I throw things away. I have caught her several times pulling items out of the garbage or recycling bin and using them in her art projects. When I tell her, “Please don’t dig things out of the garbage,” her response is, “Why? You do it.”And she’s right. While I am not a hoarder by any means—don't all hoarders say that?—I do have a nice collection of cardboard, wood, and magazines that I, too, use in my art projects. All of the relief carvings that line the walls of this gallery are made from reclaimed cardboard, Kentucky barnwood, and leftover paint. They represent a marriage of repurposed materials and childlike imagination. Cardboard has always been an expedient. One uses cardboard to pack, to fill a void, and to protect more important materials. Once used, cardboard is discarded. And why not? It disintegrates when wet, it rips and bends. Beneath its unadorned skin are unseen layers that create the skeleton of the cardboard. It is the juxtaposition between smooth exterior and corrugated or honeycombed interior that provides the perfect medium for my relief carvings. All of the images I cut begin as photographs, still life pictures brimming with potential energy: the musician inspired by the music in his headphones, the elderly women out for a walk in the rain, the horse scratching his face on a post, the homeless woman on the steps of the Colombian capital. Digitally simplified to positive and negative space, shadow and light, their realism transforms into impressionistic dream. Sketched onto cardboard, impression briefly becomes expression: a mass of squiggles and lines. The process of carving allows for focused meditation. I follow the sketched lines with a craft knife, peeling back layers to create an image that is not only visual but also tactile. The erstwhile two-dimensional photograph is now a three-dimensional relief, returning the depth of the living image.I portray what is often ignored on a medium that is often wasted. As for the Compost Monsters, they , too, are an example of finding life in that which has been tossed out. The monsters are simply mirrored images of the fruits and veggies we keep in a cup in the freezer. Before dumping them in the compost pile, I take a series of snapshots. The lines, colors, and textures make for images that are sometimes comical, sometimes uncomfortable, and almost always visceral.As I type this statement, I am sitting across the table from a shadowbox that Emaline made from the wood I had discarded. In the box she has glued some corrugated packing material that works as a backdrop for the chicken bone she has affixed to the box with masking tape and string. And to think, I threw that chicken bone away.