Making borders. Framing. For a long time I wondered why it was so satisfying to enclose each of my fabricated landscapes in a decorative border. My work just doesn’t feel done until I’ve framed it. Sometimes I photograph existing picture frames and then transpose their images into negatives in Photoshop, changing the colors and enhancing the shadows and highlights. Often I’ll start a frame from scratch, finding an interesting tooled edge or naturally defined edge on something and then I’ll stretch it out and piece it together, mitering the ends into four sides. Occasionally I’ll superimpose a floral or grassy graphic on the pieces. Surrounding my pictures is like securely wrapping them up into cozy nests. It’s like marking each newly composed place separate from the rest of the world.

The land and sky here is from the frothy edge of a wave washing up on a sandy shore, turned upside down and inverted to its negative in Photoshop. The moon is drawn from the image of an old tarnished Celtic knot pendant that I lightened and highlighted.

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Inspiration for these fabricated landscapes often smacks me when I’m not at all focused on creating. Preparing to cook clams on my grill one evening, I unwrapped a package of metal mesh grilling sheets, shifting the layers in the process. The way they reflected the light reminded me of an ocean’s surface. A seascape, I thought. And later, in Photoshop, I paired the mesh sheets with a photograph of crystal plates that reflected similar angles and diamond shapes when stacked. Moon over a calm ocean. Too calm, I realized. I wanted it to be lighter, more uplifting. So I superimposed an image of the discarded remains of cutout tin can tops I’d photographed at a local scrapyard—to fill the sky with flying birds.

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