"Cattle Crossing"
Connemara Conservancy 1998

This installation was made up of 50 signs identical in style and materials with standard traffic warning signs. Each sign portrayed the head of a Texas longhorn. The signs were arranged, using a grid, to mimic a herd of cattle crossing a stream. Connemara Conservancy is a 72 acre nature preserve on the border of Allen and Plano Texas - suburbs of Dallas. The site is a natural rolling savannah landscape and is used for many recreational activities as well as this exhibition. It is a mixture of open meadows and smaller copses of Oak and Pecan trees. The large open expansive feeling of the place gives one the sense of the Texas portrayed in Western movies.

Each year the Connemara Conservancy commissions 10 artists to create 10 temporary works for the site.
This work continues my work with symbols and my interest in how they can confuse as well as inform; hide as well as describe. Symbols are used throughout our society to direct and inform. However, they can mask real experience by hiding the individuality of the subject or flatten our sense of reality behind a stylized generic. I use the Texas Longhorn symbol to relate to the themepark western experience often substituted for the real one. In bright yellow and black this piece warns that signs and symbols can be used to direct as well as hide; and, mask as well as describe experience and information.