External and Internal Space
Imagination/Isolation invites the viewer to perceive the world through the filter of anotherís imagination, while remaining in the touchable world of his or her own perception. I am attempting to take the duality of internal and external experience and make it corporeal. This work, No. 2 in this series, focuses on imaginative perception related to childhood. The essence of the work is not my own imaginative product or the real-world objects used in the display--it is the connection between the two generated in the mind of the viewer.

The Imagination/Isolation project assumes an individual doesn't live in the world "as it is" but in an in-between space, the product of imagination acting on the world. In creating this space our imaginations give meaning and shape to what is essentially nothingness, but they also isolate us. We each live in a different world: A porcelain teacup of particular shape is, for me, a reminder of a summer in Dublin, my mother's pantry, PG Wodehouse stories. For you, it evokes, for some reason, the kitchen aisle at K-Mart; its role in your personal imagined narrative is one that I can't guess.

Some individuals have more active imaginations than others. Psychologists and Buddhas may differ on the level of imagination that is "over" active. In Lord Jim a powerful imagination paralyzes its eponymous hero. In Borges, the imagination can be seen as the producer of labyrinths.

One function, or at least side effect, of art may be to share our imaginary worlds. Viewers depart the world of their own experience and enter into the new imaginative space created by the artist. Imagination/Isolation seeks to establish a different dynamic, to overlay my imaginative world on top of the viewerís world, and to recreate something of my own world/imagination plasma in a way that can be experienced by others.