Toy Globe
1978 – 1980
It was during my time at Cranbrook as a visiting artist that I had a moment that would stay with me for years. Germano Chalant, a renowned critic, visited and toured my studio. After a long silence, he turned to the group and said, “Here is a conceptual artist, without an idea.” Those words hit me hard. I wasn’t sure if it was the criticism or the realization of my own frustration with where I was, but it felt like a punch in the gut. I walked off, lost in my thoughts, and ended up in the meadow, trying to process. I mounted a Mark di Suvero swing in an attempt to escape, not wanting anyone to see me cry. It was a deeply emotional moment, and one that forced me to face the discomfort of where I was in my practice.
That frustration bled directly into my next work, the Toy Globe. This piece was never going to be great, and I knew it. It was a transitional piece, full of struggle and raw ideas that hadn’t fully come together. It was a year of labor, and yet, it felt like it wasn’t even close to what I had envisioned. The piece was political, yes, but more importantly, it was a confrontation with my limitations, an effort to push through and find meaning in the chaos.
Up to that point, I had believed that taking a political stand was what it meant to be a conceptual artist. But it always felt juvenile and amateurish. There was nothing profound in the messaging—it wasn’t effective, and, more importantly, it didn’t mean anything. The Toy Globe made that glaringly clear. In hindsight, it was the end of one way of thinking.
After that piece, I stripped away the blatant messaging and began searching for something deeper—something closer to, for lack of a better phrase, the meaning of life. I started looking at the space in between. As a form-relationship sculptor in undergraduate school, I had been taught to hold two objects in the air, move them closer or further apart until they felt just right—and then, to envision what was missing. If it worked for objects, I wondered, could it work for ideas?
It does.
From that point on, I began to think of myself as an idea-relationship sculptor. That became my path forward. I wasn’t interested in shouting meaning anymore—I was exploring how meaning arises between things, between people, between moments. Isn’t that what a conceptual artist really is?
The Toy Globe was a necessary confrontation with my limitations and assumptions. A crucible. Not a great work, but the exact transition I needed to discover a different kind of clarity.
And then, almost overnight, the Large Glass piece came to me—suddenly, in a flash. The Toy Globe had taken a year, but the Large Glass took mere moments to conceptualize. It was a breakthrough, a surge of clarity, and it felt like everything I had been grappling with in my work and my identity as an artist finally clicked into place.
I named it in honor of my hero, Marcel Duchamp. But it wasn’t just an homage. It was the moment when my thinking shifted entirely. The Toy Globe had been a struggle, but the Large Glass came effortlessly—a manifestation of everything I had been trying to express but couldn’t quite capture before.
That flash of inspiration was the turning point. It was when I became the artist I am today—deeply curious, unafraid of mistakes, and with the courage to trust my own conviction. The Large Glass wasn’t just a piece; it was my first live art installation, the work that would define my path forward and inform the rest of my career. It was the realization that I didn’t need everything to be perfect, and that mistakes were part of the journey. This was the moment when I truly understood what it meant to be an artist and embrace the full scope of my creative potential.
Large Glass Piece
