“The artist shapes the beautiful and useful out of the dump heap of human life.” Claude Lévi-Strauss

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My work talks to the possibility of reinvention and second chances.  A bottle top is not just a bottle top – it is reshaped, a light.  A table does not just hold drinks – it tells a story.

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I do not subscribe to the artificial and judgmental distinction between [high] art and [low] craft, preferring to blur such boundaries.  What is a gallery but another kind of (up)market?  So, a lightbulb in the arse of a wooden chicken becomes a “cock sunrise” – and why not?

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I am also not worried about whether putting a lightbulb (or several!) turns an “artwork” into “furniture”.  I am telling a story through these objects, and if electric light helps illuminate the point, so much the better.   

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I am inspired by the concept of the bricoleur, working with the objects to hand to create something novel, something unexpected.  As Lévi-Strauss described it, the bricoleur is the “savage mind”, working with her hands in devious ways, putting pre-existing things together in new ways, that they were not originally meant for.

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