Pale Male: A Pilgrimage springs forth from my own spiritual journey. Its direction comes not from my hand alone and its outpouring still rather mystifies me. I look at it as a contemporary icon of sorts. It comes out a soul-searching time, primarily post 9/11, when I was questioning the very meaning of creating art in such a world and the significance it could have. The title references the story of the famous hawk who made his home in a balcony window in a luxury New York City apartment complex, but it also alludes to Christ drained of blood, hanging on the cross, another form of sacrifice... and home for many who are lost. Pondering an exhibition of Byzantine Icons at The Metropolitan Museum in 2004, I discovered that icons were understood to be “the strength, shelter, consolation and spiritual reinforcement of a nation which was in danger and later in bondage.” This forced me to consider, “What holy icons or art are our nation’s reinforcement? Having worked for over ten years at the World Trade Center, arguably the heart of capitalism, I pondered the situation… Jesus vs. Nike… who wins in our commodity-driven world?”

Out of this exploration erupts Pale Male: A Pilgrimage, where soul and science, real and virtual unite in an attempt to reach out and touch as in digit, finger, senses… the human heart and spirit.