SQUARE INCHES OF FACE

While traveling overseas with my photographer husband, I walked the beaches of many countries looking for objects caught in the wrack line. I wandered the outback of Australia collecting bits of wood, tin, seed pods, and bones.  I wandered through Moroccan and Indian markets, buying sparkling trims and beads and searched through English antique shops for odd or broken bits of junk and unique ephemera. I have thousands of these treasures stored in flat drawers. A new box usually starts with a single object that grabs me on any one day.  It may suggest a story, a place, a memory, or a dream. The rest comes together like characters in a plot. Each time I open a drawer—it's like a casting call.  The box construction series Square Inches of Face reflects Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote—

“A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.”