“Finding again the world,
... where loveliness
Adorns intelligible things
Because the mind's eye lit the sun.”

-Howard Nemerov

I have spent the last year where I grew up. The land beneath Lake Lanier in North Georgia had been home to Cherokee Indians and the Mississippian Indians before them and to the settlers who followed them both. When the Chestatee and Chattahoochee rivers were dammed to form the lake in 1950, the lowlands were never to be seen again. Houses, barns, farms, churches, and graveyards were moved and saved or left behind and lost forever. Indian paths, hunting grounds and gathering places were covered beneath the rising waters of the rivers.

During a recent historic drought, lake levels fell dramatically and land previously under as much as 20 feet of water again saw the light of day and surrendered evidence of lives long past. I felt a responsibility to imagine a new life for these messengers of other lives. With this body of work I have attempted to honor the beauty of lost things.

The almost 5000 glass shards that make up the center installation were gathered where they were discarded 60 or 100 or more years ago. I found much of it behind stone foundations of former homes or around circular stone hearths.The red dirt is from the ground that later became the lake bed.
Other artifacts serve as poignant reminders of what came before - a porcelain doll's arm, a Cherokee pottery shard, arrowheads, a favored delicate pottery, and sturdy Southern crockery.

The collaged paintings, some with as many as 20 layers of paint, refer to the archaeological process by which I found the artifacts - the alternate covering and uncovering in order to find what is beneath.