About the Artist

As a youngster, sitting still in school was a difficult chore. At 14, my parents gave me a special pen, a Rapidograph, along with a book of blank paper and permission to doodle in the book instead of the margins of my notes. This served me well, and, as long as I concentrated in class I was allowed to indulge my need to draw and doodle. I never quit doodling.

I continued this odd habit of doodling throughout college, med school and my professional life as a surgeon. Prior to attending medical school, I earned an MFA in Sculpture and Design. I taught art at Centre College in Danville Kentucky. With the recession in 1973-4, I lost my job and took a leap of faith to go to medical school. I eventually became a Head and Neck Surgeon (ENT). Now I would not just draw and sculpt people, I could actually help them. I continued to draw and create a figurative sculpture in bronze throughout my career as a surgeon.

On retirement from Kaiser Permanente, I learned a new technique: the combination of the linear vision of my drawings with the solidarity of metal in sculpture. An elderly mentor, Chris Sorensen, taught me the technique of welding coat hangers into sculpture.

This technique is fascinating and I was completely captured. What is hard and cold, I can twist and meld into a figure of my imagination. The lines of my ink drawings are re-imagined into the linear nature of the hangers. And, I am recycling a waste product of our contemporary life.

I call this new series of sculptures: Feminizing Steel. I take delight in transforming the hangers into intricate labyrinths of paisley and lace to form a recognizable figure. Hush is such a piece. The patina is rust. Nature also has its place in my work.

PUBLIC ART

“THE ACORN GATHERER” Commission for Clovis, California installation BRONZE

September 2009

MEMBERSHIP

Sorensen Gallery	2016
Fig Tree Gallery	2009-CURRENT

ART PUBLISHED

Narrative Medicine Anthology, Collection from the Permanente Journal, “Modern Woman”, Permanent Press	2015
Drawings of Evany Zirul, ISBN 978-0-615-46499-2-52500 a collection of #107 pen & ink drawings	2011
“Modern Woman” Epidemiologic Review, Vol 33/2011 Harvard Review, Breast Cancer Monograph “Modern Woman”	2010
Permanente Medical Journal “Modern Woman” (bronze)	2009
Permanente Medical Journal, Drawings,	2007
I1 IV, Ishmael Reed and A. Young	1984
Quilt V, Ishmael Reed and A. Young	1985
(medical illustrations for various medical publications)	1980-2001