“I am interested in human emotions, transformed by memory and expressed in form”

I was born in Egypt and moved to the United States as a child. At an early age I became fascinated by archaeology, and my work has been substantially influenced by ancient Egyptian, Greek and Cycladic art.  I have pursued my love of sculpture my entire life, first as a hobby, and later, seriously enough to extend my education and build a significant body of work for exhibiting.

I have experimented with various materials, casting in bronze, which requires many steps to complete the arduous process. I then moved into carving in stone, a very different kind of sculpting. Both my bronze and stone sculptures feel simultaneously contemporary and ancient.  Stone, my current passion, has been part of the earliest human artistic communication. It is seen in prehistoric cave paintings incorporating the shape of the rock to evoke a three dimensional animal, as well as the ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, often incised directly into the stone of the pyramids. Its’ fascinating history for me is part of its’ allure.

Through the years, as my work has evolved, I have come to respect the materials in new ways. Instead of planning what I want to do with the raw material, I let the stone guide me in what is essentially a non-verbal conversation. It tells me what it needs to become. I don’t work from photographs or drawings, and generally don’t have a preconceived idea before I start a piece. My subconscious takes over, and I listen to the stone, and begin working almost through an intuitive process. As I work, my own excitement builds, as the stone takes form and I realize the direction I am meant to take. Each sculpture is a beautiful result of transforming stone into something with heart and meaning.