I have always felt a desire to make sculpture. I thought about it for a very long time before I finally mustered up the courage to see if I had what it takes. On my 50^th birthday, with no previous experience, I located a foundry in Florence, Italy and began to work on my first models.

I chose my birthday because for me, birthdays symbolize new beginnings and represent auspicious opportunities to try new and possibly daunting ventures. I had no idea what a wonderful door this particular birthday would open for me. In the beginning I only created one or two sculptures a year because I still had other commitments, mainly painting and stone lithography. However, when my work in stone lithography came to an end, my focus immediately turned to sculpture with increased intensity. It is clear to me now that the women and otherworldly beings I had been painting and drawing over the years were waiting to come to life three dimensionally.

About my patinas: In 1991, my first ten sculptures were cast in Florence, Italy with the traditional Florentine patinas, used for centuries in Italy. I worked closely with the master craftsman, Piero Bertelli, from the beginning of each sculpture to the final patina. The foundry only worked with this  patina, the same one used by the great sculptors of the Renaissance: Michelangelo, Donatello, Cellini, and so on.

When I began to receive requests for larger sculptures and different patinas, I transferred the casting to a foundry in Berkeley, California.  They had more experience in the colored patinas that I wanted to experiment with.

About editions: This is an example on how the edition system works: My first sculpture, Little Angel, cast in Florence was 18” tall (46 cm) and had a Florentine patina. The edition size was 8. Later, when I wanted to enlarge some of my sculptures, Piero flew to California so that we could work on the larger sculptures together. In California, Little Angel was recreated ¾ life size with colored patinas. The edition size of the larger Little Angel sculpture was also an edition of 8.