While an undergraduate in painting I began to think about frames.  At that time, if a painting had a frame at all, it was a thin self-effacing line, serving as protection for the art, and as conceptual dividing line. The frame was a line that signified that all that was within was art, and all outside the frame was not art. If one elected to use a frame, it was suppose to be unobtrusive, even invisible. 

While pondering the nature of frames, I ran across some illuminated manuscripts in the University library, and saw how the borders visually commented on the text, sometimes even spoofing or commenting on the text.  From this observation I realized that a frame could be many things; it could be an informing context, it could be an environment, it could be a fanfare, it could extend movement, it could be a conceptual or formal elaboration, it could embody ancillary ideas, it could be like a body that houses and expresses the mind, and many other permutations.  From that point I began to create pieces that fused frame and painting, with some pieces having doors that open and close over paintings, to suggest contingency, time, potentiality, future, past, or cause and effect.

In addition to the frame/painting pieces, in recent years I have begun a series of purely sculptural pieces, of gilded carved wood, to explore how sculpture alone, can articulate meaning.