process is making the desired image in wax, and working with wax introduced new possibilities. Wax has special properties: it is lighter than water and hence it floats; it is insoluble in water and will not stick to anything wet; when hot it is thin and flows easily, but chills and solidifies quickly. The versatility of wax lends itself to exploring many kinds of flow patterns. Hot wax introduced suddenly into cold water chills instantly in the shape of a splash or wave or, under other conditions, in the shape of flame, or plants, or sea weed. The negative space created by a blast of cold water or air in a pool of molten wax produces another kind of shape. The water or air chills the wax and leaves a space that is the shape of the flow, evidence of the energy that has passed through it. Nature presents us with these tracks of energy in the form of canyons, mountains, river valleys, and other geological formations that thrill us because they put us in touch with the forces shaping our natural world. Our recognition of the similarity of one form to another, irrespective of material or size, makes art possible.

Bronze sculpture, ideally, has a wall thickness of no more than 1/4 inch because a thicker wall tends to shrink differentially, causing distortions and cracking. Thus, except for the smallest bronzes, bronze sculpture is hollow. This hollowness presents itself to me as an opportunity to examine both exterior form and interior space, creating visual metaphors for the life of mind and spirit. Flow is ubiquitous in the physical world. It is also a metaphor for our internal lives, a metaphor which I employ when making visible the interior spaces of my bronze figures.

Drawing is a way of thinking about form, and I have continued exploring space and natural form in my drawings. The wax paintings, begun in 2003, combine positive shapes of flow with the negative tracks left by streams of cold air and water. Color and metal powders clarify the shapes and reveal the surfaces. Flowing matter responding to streams of energy captured on a wood panel here on earth resembles the photos of structures in outer space, illustrating once again the interconnectedness of all things.

Trees, ravines, rocks, clay, fossils, artifacts left by Native American inhabitants: these are the things that fascinated me as a child growing up at the edge of a forest in eastern Illinois. I loved to draw, paint, and model clay. In school I also loved geometry and math and learning how things worked.

In the late 1980s. I learned the ancient process of lost wax bronze casting. An important step in that