This work from 2005 grew out of a month-long residency in France. Only a bit of the work was begun there, but the influence of the experience lingered. From my window at the chateau, I had a view of pollard trees with their strange mittened ends, hedges fastidiously clipped and containing openings for passage, and bushes forced into animal shapes. This gardening tradition was new to me. In it I saw cartoon and animation, a sense of the "fantastic." In my work there is a sense of the "fantastic": a playful pushing on materials, the legacy of surrealism and a portion of science fiction. During my residency I felt connected to the legacy and history of the "fantastic" that I found in Rochefort-en-terre, Brittany, France.