I asked myself this morning why I am so intrigued by working with materials that I have to rescue, clean, and sort.  I can say that I love looking at them because they are so imperfect and because they are not so understandable as art. There is a mystery to these materials in their rough state and I often have to sit with them or dream about them before I can unravel their next use. . There is a moment when a use for, say, a bulging bag of quilt scraps, becomes a concept which then becomes a reality and the scrap becomes a tile to be used in a number of ways in a number of collages. There is another moment for discovering how a twisted piece of mystery metal creates perfect balance in an otherwise incomplete picture. I relish the practicality of working only with what already exists and the joy of seeing it reborn in a collage. This is the work that truly resonates with me.  Although my work may be less understandable than a landscape or a portrait, it provides for me an adventure in art making that I have found in no other arena.