Public Art 1 •  house & garden

Where Text and Context Lie Down Together

"Replanting the Handmade Sky" Times Square NYC 1990

Before I was a mason I was an artist. I started writing poetry in high school. In 1975 I began painting my poems on barns in Maine and then on walls in Cambridge Massachusetts and beyond. I built poems out of neon, towed poems through the sky with airplanes. Suddenly I was a visual artist. I have always felt beleaguered and fenced in by labels and categories. Visual artist. Craftsman. Mason. Sculptor. Poet. Artisan. New Genres. Mixed Media. To me it is only my work and when it overflows one category and spills into another, so what.