Into the Void
Much of what I’m drawn to by the concept of Dystopia was born in fiction. In the 9th grade I was thrown out of school for, ironically, not staying in school. As punishment an ill conceived and probably inappropriate reading curriculum was forced on me. I was locked in my room with books pulled from required college reading lists. Dangerous books. Authors like Kaufka and Orwell presented psychological prisons that profoundly impacted my world view. A turbulent youth and inability to embrace social structure were suddenly justified in the vilification of authority. Try as I might to embrace humanity, the suspicion that we live in a monstrously unjust society with evil, petty, and stupid people bureaucratizing our creativity out of existence, still lingers.
I sculpt with steel, glass, wood, and discarded objects. Stylistically I work with discarded history, obsolete architecture, and the creatures that inhabit those spaces. Improbable and anxious machines populating a landscape of broken history.
Strangely enough, it’s not a sense of bleakness that I hope to convey, but a sense of the heroic. Framed within a narrative of futility, my anonymous figures are insects in the machinery of oppression, but they are silently heroic. Stoic and thoughtful, curious and industrious, they embody my own artistic tenacity. Even the machinery has a spark of hope embodied in it’s improbable mechanical framework. Under the rust of rediscovered salvage, lenses and spheres hint at fantastic science, pathways and truswork underly great feats of engineering. I see my work as a celebration of discovery made more precious by the contrast of it’s environment and dubious outcome.
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