I have been asked about my Artist Statement many times. Each times, the statement that I put together is different depending on what pieces I am working on, what theme I am focused on, what skills I am developing or what context I am working in at the moment. This often frustrates people because they want to have a paragraph about me that sums me up so that they can understand me and feel that they know all about me and my work. Unfortunately I am not as simple as that.
There are some threads that run through all my work in that each piece that I make has meaning and content beyond the material, method and process that went into making it. I tend to create work in thematic series, focusing on a general idea with each piece in the series focusing on a specific part of that idea. These pieces often come together into a body of work that together create a larger picture about the concept as a whole, from my point of view expressing my thoughts about the topic. I often work on multiple pieces at once, sometimes even two or three bodies of work at a time because I tend to work in materials and processes that take a lot of time and have multiple steps with a lot of time taken up with things like drying time or curing time. I keep my mind active on more than one idea because my world is full many issues and things that I could focus my creative energies on.
I often find that I can loose myself in the process of making my work, tending to use processes that have small, repetitive actions like polishing stones, sanding wood, carving, gluing thousands of pieces of text onto luminary surfaces, etc. I find a rhythm in these processes that I can fall into and let time slip away. I enjoy the feeling of surrender to those processes and methods. I don't try to only make "beautiful" work, but I strive to make work that connects with people, work that draws people in, work that asks questions, starts conversations and becomes something more than what I put into it.
For more detailed statements focused on specific bodies of work, please go through the galleries. Most have statements about the body of work and some have multiple statements documenting the evolution of the work.
There are some threads that run through all my work in that each piece that I make has meaning and content beyond the material, method and process that went into making it. I tend to create work in thematic series, focusing on a general idea with each piece in the series focusing on a specific part of that idea. These pieces often come together into a body of work that together create a larger picture about the concept as a whole, from my point of view expressing my thoughts about the topic. I often work on multiple pieces at once, sometimes even two or three bodies of work at a time because I tend to work in materials and processes that take a lot of time and have multiple steps with a lot of time taken up with things like drying time or curing time. I keep my mind active on more than one idea because my world is full many issues and things that I could focus my creative energies on.
I often find that I can loose myself in the process of making my work, tending to use processes that have small, repetitive actions like polishing stones, sanding wood, carving, gluing thousands of pieces of text onto luminary surfaces, etc. I find a rhythm in these processes that I can fall into and let time slip away. I enjoy the feeling of surrender to those processes and methods. I don't try to only make "beautiful" work, but I strive to make work that connects with people, work that draws people in, work that asks questions, starts conversations and becomes something more than what I put into it.
For more detailed statements focused on specific bodies of work, please go through the galleries. Most have statements about the body of work and some have multiple statements documenting the evolution of the work.