In 2004, while taking Dr. Robert K. Wallace's  class "Melville and the Arts" at Northern Kentucky University, I read Moby-Dick for the fourth time, and began a series of work based on my responses to the novel.  It formed the basis for my BFA senior thesis show, and might have ended there ... but my interest in the subject continued long after graduation.  An Individual Artist Professional Development Grant, received in 2009 from the Kentucky Arts Council, helped me to build on this body of work in preparation for the three person show "In the Heart of the Sea" at the Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois.  Some of my prints from this series have been included in scholarly publications on Melville, and three of my Melville-related works are held in the Elizabeth Schultz Collection at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. 

Melville's words, whenever I return to them,  continue to spread open the "floodgates of the wonder world" before me, and the series is ongoing.