Artist Statement for Tools and Figures
…disorders and remedies
My work revolves around the idea of beauty. The common thought and perception of beauty is often universal. Those in the world who do not fit within the commonalities are often times quickly dismissed and people with deformities are sometimes even cast-out of society. I view these differences as beautiful. I feel that as a society, we suffer from a lack of compassion for people that do not closely resemble us. My figurative sculptures are meant to celebrate this cross section of the society we live in. The outcasts, the people who are hidden away in intuitions to eventually be “fixed”, these are the people who excite me. The difference in the way a face can be configured, to me, is like drawing a robust model, filled with curves, angles and fantastic shapes. These pieces celebrate people for who they are, for all of their differences. By drawing from the ideas of Greek and Roman busts, I give the people with disorders and anomalies a sense of beauty and importance in our culture and our lives and hopefully increase our own sense of awareness of the society we live in.
I also make ceramic sculpture derived from historic medical tools and devices. The work concentrates on the interaction of objects, color, movement, mass and specified disorders they are meant to work on. I carefully choose antique objects to recreate distorting the scale to remove them from their original context. Construction of these pieces is a complicated task where I coil-build, throw and alter many parts before entire pieces take their final shape. I then glaze them using rust-like textured glazes, contrasting very shiny glazes and sometimes use decals further removing them from their original shiny metal environment.
Both styles of sculpture that I make appear to be very different, however they are very closely related and are continually informing each other. I often think of my work in terms of disorders and remedies; the figures are depicting the disorders and then there are the tools for treatment. I intend for my work to force the viewer into a challenging and sometimes uncomfortable relationship with the object and elicit a physical reaction, whether it is cringing, questioning or smiling; this allows the viewer to experience the piece.