Trained as a writer, it is inevitable that language is inextricably tied to my work as a visual artist. My work of the last several years has been a series of room-sized installations, consisting of multiple small discreet elements that one may move through in a narrative way, not just figuratively but actually, reading the work as text if one so chooses. By example, my first installation in the Silas-Kenyon Gallery, called Have Broken Up, involved a collection of roughly three hundred, four-inch quilt squares made of sandwiched semi-transparent silk organza. Some had lines of text printed on them; others had tiny domestic objects- flower pot, soap box, telephone- sewn into them. The squares were pinned to the wall in one linear row around the room at eye level, so that viewers could traverse the entire piece as a narrative, engage discreet sections of the whole, or look at each square individually. I was struck by the way the meaning of individual pieces changed as people bought them, thereby lifting them out of their original context: what had once invoked grief, for instance, could be made to invoke joy, or vice versa.

In the same way a long piece of writing is made up of individual words that, lifted from the body of the text, contain their own individual meaning, my aspiration for each of the elements of these large installations is that they be able to stand on their own as individual works. Consequently, I'm beginning to spend more time on individual pieces, investing each one with the same attention (and intention) that I've in the past afforded the installations. I am currently working on a series of pieces that feature eggs as central elements, which will include small dioramas and cuckoo clocks.

As in other work, I employ the homely arts of sewing, embroidery, and quilting, as well as more traditional sculpture media such as ceramic and wood. My subject matter continues to stem from the intimate and the domestic, from which the work assumes its place in the global or political realm.

The Schoolhouse is located at 494 Commercial Street, in Provincetown's historic East End Gallery District. The galleries are open daily from 11, and always by appointment. For information, please call Michael Carroll(508) 487.4800. xt 105