The name of my graduate exhibition at Fresno State University comes from a short story I read by H.P. Lovecraft called The Silver Key that resonated with my inner life. The main character, Carter, is a lucid dreamer seeking to go back to the fabulous dream lands of his childhood to which he has lost the way now that he is an adult. Not only does he have to find the door to this land, but he also needs a special silver key to get through that door. For me, the door has become a symbol of both connection and escape. Because when I dream I am often lucid, I can create portals in my dream world to travel between dreams. These portals take the form of doorways connecting one dream to another. These doors also serve as escape hatches when one dream becomes too nightmarish and difficult to manage, and I must retreat. But always there is only one door that really matters, although try as I might I cannot enter it. The old system that guards my mind forbids me to enter and goes to great lengths to keep me away from it. That door is locked and heavily guarded. Somehow, I must find the key to this door and restore myself to wholeness. The work in this show documents my effort in that direction. The army of Electric Imps represents broken pieces of a whole that have developed independent personalities as subsystems of the personality. These split-off part selves were created and shaped by various events and people, and the different paths I have taken and choices I have made along the way. The imps are remade from recycled parts to show a positive use of something otherwise regarded negatively as garbage. These objects are given new meaning, a re-framing that reflects the ambiguous nature of these creatures as both destructive and creative forces. The electric cord used as a tail has important meaning to me as a source for power, connection and communication.