At a flea market I found a sculpture of a primitive carving of a saint, a “santos” or “bultos”, typical of Mexico and the southwestern United States. At the same time, I had been thinking about the murders and disappearances of girls and women in Ciudad Juarez. Since the santos was holding a book in one hand, I decided to add a cascading concertina of pages related to this horrific series of events. A painter by training and collage-maker by nature, I have combined traditional and digital media since being introduced to computers in the late 1960’s when working on my doctorate at Penn State. My work includes large scale mixed media pieces, artist books and book-like objects that bridge between these two forms. It embeds archetypal symbols and fragments of image and text in multiple layers of texture and meaning. It combines the humblest of materials, plaster, tar, wax and pigment, with the latest in technology to evoke the past and herald the future. My art-making is an integrated mode of inquiry that links concept and media in an ongoing dialogue - a visible means of exploring meaning.