My work is often inspired by the close relationship between tattoos and the honoring of plants and animals by other cultures, both past and present.

At the Brooklyn Museum is a small exhibition of jewelry, pottery, hunting tools and other objects of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Pre-Columbian time. One of the objects is a gold Chiriqui pendant of a spider whose legs end in human hands. This pendant served as an active extension of its owner, like tattoos, and a communicator of awe for a creature of nature.

An artist whose work includes spiders is Louise Bourgeois who saw spiders as elegant, fearsome and protective.