Judy Chicago Kitty City Sculpture Project

A very exciting recent project was working with feminist artist Judy Chicago. In College, I saw Judy Chicago’s "Dinner Party" at SF MOMA. It was 1979 and I was a student of Robert Arneson at UC Davis. Arneson advised his students should attend the show. It was my introduction to Judy’s work. and the experience always stayed with me. I've since learned that the Dinner Party exhibit broke all previous attendance records at the SF MOMA.

In 2005, I met Judy for the first time and soon began working on a sculpture project with her and John Natsoulas. I sculpted eight cat portraits from Chicago’s book Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours. The collaboration took place over a 6 month period during which time Chicago often came to work in my Davis studio. Judy Chicago china painted the final sculptures. The John Natsoulas Gallery unveiled the sculptures in Chicago at the 2005 Sculptural Objects and Functional Art show. Since then the sculptures have travelled to New York and Los Angeles.

What an honor to work with the amazing Judy Chicago. She is an inspiring woman and I have great respect for her.

The project led to more explorations of cat imagery. I had a solo show "The Cat Aesthetic" in March 06 featuring cat imagery. This lead to a commission of a life size Leopard sculpture for a collector in Napa.