Working with grapevine is always a challenge. First, you have to yank it down out of the trees, avoiding falling branches, briars, poison ivy and ticks. The best vines are long and flexible, woody and strong, tense and bossy, with a will of their own. The Spirit Pieces began as a basket form I have enjoyed over the years that uses a technique called random weaving. I decided to experiment with larger frames, and this change opened up possibilities for forms impossible in the basket version. The shapes immediately appeared as figures to me. As I wrap the vines over and under, surrounding the air, "They" emerge spontaneously. I can develop gesture and directionality, but there is a physics to the movement of the vine that I must follow, not control. It is like weaving with an energy form. "The artist alone sees spirits. But when he tells of them appearing to him, everyone sees them." Goethe. This is my emotional connection with the work.