Walk outside on a sunny spring day and find a tree with new leaves. Now position yourself so the sun must come through the leaves to your eyes. Stand inside dark and cool Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, or the church down the street. Relax your focus and take in the light coming through the stained glass windows. Watch the sunlight come through the breaking waves in the clear turquoise blue of the Caribbean Sea. It’s not the objects that are so visually powerful – it's the effect of light transforming the object.

It is our nature as human beings to find those luminous colors – clear, bright, and pure, to be both exciting and attractive. They stimulate the eye and lift the spirit in a way no reflective light ever truly does. When I see or think of this kind of color, the phrase that comes to my mind is “living light”.

One way to interpret the physical world is to see each life as energy experiencing a physical manifestation. Following that thought, light becomes a metaphor for life. Working with glass, I can create an environment where that life can energize, inhabit and interact with the physical world. In each piece, I strive to consider how the piece will interact with the available light. In addition to considering the effects of natural, ambient light, I experiment with light from other sources, including electro-luminescent elements, fiber optics, laser diodes, and LEDs to charge the pieces and make them come alive.

I worked as a painter and as a potter before I began working with glass. I believe working with glass is the closest I have come to creating with “living light”. I work the glass with torches, kilns and cold assembly, and find that each process brings its own aesthetic to the material.

The pieces I create are about interaction with light. They are an intersection between the worlds of matter and energy.