Aesthetics, conceptual content, craft, and materials are all important elements in my artwork. My goal as an artist is to create an interaction that sparks a deeper conversation within the viewer. I hope for my work to stimulate a moment of awareness that excites the senses, engages the mind, and generates a space of awakening outside the rote of daily life. I’m not so concerned about what the conversation is, just as long as there is one.
I believe a tactile nature is at the core of who we are as human beings. Touch is as important as any other sense in determining how we relate to each other and our environs. In an increasingly fast paced, technological, and impersonalized society, touch slows us down and centers us. It provides a depth and richness to our experiences and allows us access to the texture of life. Sculpture is the creative medium most closely aligned with touch. Even when one doesn’t lay a hand on the piece, it still ignites our sense of touch. We “feel” it with our eyes.
My artwork is both sensual and sexual. Not simply the sexual act of fornication, but the broader intercourse of two opposing and codependent energies wherever they exist: Yin & Yang, nature & humankind, physical & spiritual, feminine & masculine. For me, everything comes down to how these contrasting yet supportive energies resonate in combination with one another.
A form in nature never exists in isolation. A tree stands in a grove and the grove abuts a hedgerow that is next to a meadow. All these relationships are meaningful and mutually enhancing. We also do not exist as individuals in an environment of minimalism or a reality of an isolated form. We exist in relationship – active relationship: moving, jostling, growing, touching, bumping, caressing, forcing, pressing. I want to capture a moment of this for the viewer’s interest, the energy and tension between separate entities with differences and similarities. Material, texture, and form become distinct languages through which to express relationship. When I juxtapose different materials, textures, or forms, it enhances each element of the piece and reflects what I find in nature. It is the relationship, the contrast or support, between these elements that heightens the intensity of the work and brings it richness and beauty.
Sculpture is also unique in its ability to combine the emotional immediacy of a painting with the capacity to inform and mold space the same way that architecture can. The presence of a sculpture’s form both charges and defines the environment around it. When the viewer comes into that “charged” space, they enter the energy of the sculpture and in some sense enter into the sculpture itself. The impact of walking into a room with a single sculpture is a very different experience than entering into an area surrounded by twenty of my totem pieces. It is this kind of impact I strive to generate as an artist.
I believe a tactile nature is at the core of who we are as human beings. Touch is as important as any other sense in determining how we relate to each other and our environs. In an increasingly fast paced, technological, and impersonalized society, touch slows us down and centers us. It provides a depth and richness to our experiences and allows us access to the texture of life. Sculpture is the creative medium most closely aligned with touch. Even when one doesn’t lay a hand on the piece, it still ignites our sense of touch. We “feel” it with our eyes.
My artwork is both sensual and sexual. Not simply the sexual act of fornication, but the broader intercourse of two opposing and codependent energies wherever they exist: Yin & Yang, nature & humankind, physical & spiritual, feminine & masculine. For me, everything comes down to how these contrasting yet supportive energies resonate in combination with one another.
A form in nature never exists in isolation. A tree stands in a grove and the grove abuts a hedgerow that is next to a meadow. All these relationships are meaningful and mutually enhancing. We also do not exist as individuals in an environment of minimalism or a reality of an isolated form. We exist in relationship – active relationship: moving, jostling, growing, touching, bumping, caressing, forcing, pressing. I want to capture a moment of this for the viewer’s interest, the energy and tension between separate entities with differences and similarities. Material, texture, and form become distinct languages through which to express relationship. When I juxtapose different materials, textures, or forms, it enhances each element of the piece and reflects what I find in nature. It is the relationship, the contrast or support, between these elements that heightens the intensity of the work and brings it richness and beauty.
Sculpture is also unique in its ability to combine the emotional immediacy of a painting with the capacity to inform and mold space the same way that architecture can. The presence of a sculpture’s form both charges and defines the environment around it. When the viewer comes into that “charged” space, they enter the energy of the sculpture and in some sense enter into the sculpture itself. The impact of walking into a room with a single sculpture is a very different experience than entering into an area surrounded by twenty of my totem pieces. It is this kind of impact I strive to generate as an artist.