SEE DALTON MARONEY'S GALLERY

Nature creates and recreates structure out of chaos, constantly seeking a dynamic balance. Humankind follows suit, building shelters, philosophies, and civilizations. Dalton Maroney is an artist whose sculptures evolve in harmony with this universal imperative. In his hands, bird skeletons turn into fetishes, which then become masks. The veins in a leaf become a fish skeleton and then a boat hull, and the outrigger becomes one with the wave.

Maroney's work has its origins in the ponds and lakes of his East Texas boyhood. He remains grounded in the very private world of his small hometown, where his mother lives today. The absolute stillness of that primal countryside permeates his life as well as his art. As the earth's slow shadow moves across the moon in a lunar eclipse, so does his art keep time with nature. By extension, he is devoted to the conservation of natural resources and to all aspects of ecology. He is an avid fly fisherman who ranges throughout the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest. The carcasses of old boats that he encounters on his fishing trips have found a permanent place in his imagery. He is a keen observer of the wading birds that share the water's edge. Once, at the Field Museum in Chicago, he attended an exhibit that included the skeleton of an egret. The form made a strong impression on him. He realized that the ribs attached to the spine of a bird are not unlike the ribs attached to the keel of a boat. Subconsciously, the connection had long been established.

Maroney's sculpture reveals a strong interest in construction, in the way things are made, and in the way things look before they are finished. Certain structural members, stacked as raw material or aligned to create an enclosure, reveal the inner workings of a form before it is sheathed in its final skin or after it has been reduced to its essence by the encroachment of time. "One stage superimposes itself on another," he says, "and each step alters or undoes the previous one."

The way things are made is a constant theme. However, Maroney consciously avoids venturing into narrative content. The art is about structure itself, and about the synchronicity of organic and built forms. Perhaps for this reason, Maroney has an affinity for primitive tribal societies such as the Amerind and Oceanic peoples, whose architecture and ceremonial objects are closely tied to their environment. He describes them as "those cultures for which nature and man are inseparable partners." He incorporates the merest abstract suggestions of masks, shields, canoes, and spirit houses into his skeletal compositions. It is a wholly spontaneous process. Like the aboriginal artists, he begins each piece with a basic form, then adds and subtracts layers without a definite end in mind. If he does drawings, they are after the fact, reflective rather than generative. Maroney's sculptures, stately yet untamed, are artifacts of the process of becoming.