"The idea to do sculpture was a long time in the making.  I only took one sculpture class in college and hated it.  We were using plaster of Paris, doing these hideous busts.  Or at least mine was hideous.  One of the reasons for wanting to do sculpture was specifically because I hadn't really studied it, and had few preconceptions.

On the way to Sun Valley, Idaho, a few years ago, I noticed in the high desert that the trees would grow around stream beds, that being the only source of water.  Many of these little copses were crescent shaped, the stream gently curving, and the trees (always deciduous) seeming to get taller at the center of the curve.  I thought at the time how beautiful this was, how one could escape from the world and live along the curve of the stream in a little woods, surrounded by the blankness of the desert.  I guess being away from home made me think of the need for a home.  Maybe it was the tenuous connection of the trees to the land there in the snow covered desert, particularly stark for someone who lives with Douglas Firs towering around him.

I did a number of sketches, then paintings, using the crescent motif, none of which was particularly to my liking.  I abandoned the idea, or so it seemed, until I was again away from home, spending a week in Hawaii. I think the fact that the volcanoes that form the Hawaiian islands lie in a string as they do, sparked again the idea of the crescent shaped, repeating forms.  This time mountains taking the place of trees.