I am from an immigrant Italian family of tailors and garment designers, so there was always a fascinating clutter of fabrics, notions, and trims around my house. My father was always building something, and I grew up constantly making things with my hands.

Today I make sculpture because I love the process of working with different materials and the challenges of three-dimensional problems.

Much of my work is an exploration of shapes and forms from the collective unconscious, while other elements are drawn directly from my own experience. Nature, symbols, and archetypes are what inspire me. I want my sculptures to evoke deep primordial emotions, while I strive to achieve shapes and forms with universal meanings. Taken as a whole, my current body of work creates the landscape of my dreams.

Janis Purcell