These works from 1995 are from my MFA graduate exhibition at New Mexico State University. At the time, our Art Department was shadowed by the memory of a graduate student who committed suicide in his studio the first day of our final semester and made his body to look like an art piece for all of us to find.

It goes without saying that this shocking event made many of us, both students and professors, re-evaluate what it was we were trying to accomplish by choosing to be in an academic setting and the methods we used to reach our goals. Equally haunting was the fact that this student and friend had a space in the gallery at this final graduate exhibition in which his work was shown.

My work in this exhibition was largely developed due to this series of events. I was unable to paint even though I spent long hours in the studio with the final exhibition date looming on the horizon. So I started hanging things from my studio ceiling as this was the method my friend and colleague used to take his life. With fishing line and wire I would create mobiles of organic objects that when rotting would upset the balance I had created. It was simply a matter of time until I began drawing and painting these mobiles and finding that the lines of tension and release, pendulums and weights, empty airy spaces, and the flatness of the composition began to take on meanings for me which far out-weighed the painful road travelled to reach the destination.