Vessels and Tabletop Sculpture

     I create one of a kind perfume vessels, boxes and tabletop sculptures. I am fascinated by form and love the way a positive space plays against a negative space. While still a student, I began making perfume vessels and continued after graduating. It wasn't until I'd been out of school for a couple of years that I began to really get in touch with why I chose the perfume vessel. When I was a child my mother would let me sit at her marble top Victorian dresser while she got ready to go somewhere and I played with an old empty glass perfume vessel, hence the perfume vessel has held positive memories for me. That wasn't enough of a reason, however, to focus much of my vessel work on perfume. At the time I was in school I was recently widowed and had begun learning the ropes of reentering the dating arena. Perfume wields power. It beckons one to it through our sensory receptors. As it co-mingles with one's own chemistry, it's power is subtle or sometimes very overwhelming but it is not ignored by one's nose. I'd dated a man while in school for whom I could not choose the correct scent and I ended the relationship with four bottles of perfume that did not appeal to me and had clearly not appealed to him. It caused me to muse with some angst and humor over the subject of attraction and attracting. That lead me to exploring the emotional and sensual power of perfume. Currently I am using the perfume vessel as a stage for exploring larger three dimensional enameled floral sculptures that remain overlaid with metaphor for human behaviors or conditions of human nature. Not all of the current vessel work focuses on function as I broaden the scope of my inspirations for these sculptures.