Artist Statement

Aorta Transformata displays the heart as it undergoes various temperaments and experiences, while learning to love itself, others, and the world around it. The exhibit consists of twenty-seven contemporary mixed media pieces, presenting sculpture on canvas with dialogue. It wishes to live publically, as a family, for the good of healing hearts everywhere.

The collection visually represents what the heart learns in each phase of transformation. During the production of Aorta Transformata, the individual hearts were free formed from clay, which allowed the sculptures to take on a life of their own. The sculptures were then painted and decorated using whatever medium most accurately portrayed the appropriate emotion. All sculptures were then attached to a painted canvas. Twenty-seven pieces create an exhibit that chronicles the heart through openness, love, life, death and transformation. Other pieces stand on their own, telling individual stories.

Aorta Transformata contains a range of tangible emotions the heart copes with while remembering to breathe. The heart is an involuntary muscle, which means that even in the face of the heaviest emotion, it never forgets to beat. The aorta is the main artery that carries blood from the left ventricle of the heart to nearly all the branch arteries in the body. By presenting oxygenated blood to the body, the aorta allows us to keep living.

This collection values the strength of the heart as it remembers to breathe in the face of the trials, tribulations, and celebrations of life. Remembering to breathe does not speed up or make the process of transformation any easier. It does, however, allow us to be in the midst of change and learn to accept it. When we can do this, we allow ourselves to persevere, heal and prosper.

Aorta Transformata is art that truly imitates life. With each piece in the collection, the molding of the heart was what took the longest. This is true of our own hearts. . . they, too, take the longest to shape, form and cast.

Our Hearts
Our Strongest Muscle