Most of the materials I use in my work are found in my immediate environment. I use abandoned nests, fungus, snakeskins, rabbit pellets and the dried remains of small animals I find already dead. I am a hopeless scavenger/collector. It can become a bit of an obsession. The house and studio become shrines to the packrat. Here I am, just another animal in the midst of a midden.

At night I hear the rodents though. In the walls, the attic, the holes scraped into wood and plaster by tiny teeth. In the exploration of these noises I found the nests and dumps of mice, I discovered their own collections which quite often consisted of things stolen from mine. Sometimes things were broken apart or gnawed-reshaped I like to think.

An effort to create perhaps?

As I made art from the materials I gathered, I wondered what might come of these mouse collections if rodents were moved to make art. I began to save the little piles of detritus I found in dark corners, cardboard tubes and the spaces under and between furniture where I could only imagine being small enough to fit. With a small collection of these materials I began to investigate which of the tidbits most intrigued me, and I began to arrange and construct with them on a scale so small I had to use tweezers and needles to manipulate them. What I ended up with were truly miniature mouse-scale pieces.

Except for glue, the pieces included are made entirely of the things found in the mouse collections