This series titled "Dream Life of Fruits and Vegetables" began to take shape as an idea in the fall of 2011 when I became intrigued by the extraordinary forms of ornamental squash in a large box at the front of the grocery store. I am always drawn to objects that have rough texture. They might have also caught my attention because they were unexpected.

"Dream Life of Fruits and Vegetables" is an exploration of the architecture that can be found on close examination of these primarily ordinary objects. As I was born and grew up in an urban environment, freshly harvested produce rarely, if ever, graced our kitchen table. And I did my best to avoid eating most vegetables -- that is, until I visited relatives in the southeast where I learned that my family of green-thumbs grew theirs in a garden. My task was to examine what was picked, and to remove any parts that were difficult to eat or inedible prior to the preparation of meals. The big surprise for me was coming to love the taste of home-grown tomatoes in particular, and finding that vegetables right from a garden can be delicious.

During this visual exploration of light, form and subtle color tones, I began looking for interesting subject matter by shopping at the local farmers' market, where there was greater variety than the grocery market. I came to recognize that those of us who live in urban and suburban areas, when we ' re shopping at the grocery, we are getting a false impression. In fact what we are looking at is a curated exhibit of agriculture. We've come to expect that apples have near-perfect, unblemished skins; carrots are fairly straight and approximately equal of equal length. Much more visually satisfying are those that don't make "the grade." Marvelous were the imperfections, variations and curios characteristics of the ones deemed unqualified for the agriculture exhibition that is the grocery stores' produce section.

My working process is dedicated to using film and printing in the darkroom. I discovered unique ways of making prints on black-and-white paper by slightly altering the make-up of the developing chemistry. After a lot of experimentation, I was able to achieve the "colorful black & white" print that I feel expresses the concept of a "dream life" for traditional still life subjects.