The point of using found wood is that, as debris, it seems unpromising. But that lack of promise is also its appeal. The peeling paint, the color scrubbed by salt waves, sand, or human use allows my audience to recognize the influence of its past. I like best the moment when I place the first pieces of old wood, seeing all that potential, seeing relationships of form begin to take shape. My principal parameter is that the wood must be found in Provincetown. The second is not to paint that wood, whose patina is impossible to duplicate. I have learned to listen to the materials and allow for any chance opportunity to emerge, achieving the object through building up materials but also working them, modifying form with minimal carpentry—cutting, joining, sandwiching. Because of the organic nature of wood, I interfere with what it was made to be, only to make it something else: a sculpture that includes some aspect or detail from the wood’s archeological past.