Biography:
I was born in a
poisoned industrial city and both my grandfathers made their livings painting
smokestacks. My interest in the remnants
of the Industrial Age--- both the material realm and the metaphysical--- stems
from my childhood. I continue to be intrigued
by things that are on their way out or dying and how we react at that moment.
Do we flee? Try to hold things together? Or bring back an earlier version as
nostalgia? Nostalgia allows for total
group denial of the past and the creation of a false past based on consensus
that embodies the desire of the majority.
I left home and moved to New York City where I studied art. I began to
work as an assistant to the sculptor, Ronald Bladen, and did that until I began
to support myself as a laborer. At twenty eight I was diagnosed with a life
threatening illness. This changed the
way I experienced time and history. I have spent my life making art.
Artist
Statement:
I was initially
working in plastic to create figurative anthropomorphic vignettes. These pieces
mimic the surface of bronze and the associations and connections retained and
reflected in that metallic surface. My
toy-like figures are very small but brutal. Brutality is like our circulatory
system, it runs through us and through the systems we invent and organize. My
figures express the mundane brutality that allows for war, sets us to mindless
labor, or rears its face in our relationships, despite ourselves, despite love.
From this, my
work has evolved to where I use inanimate objects such as boats, missiles, or buildings,
in a way which allows me to deal with these same issues of brutality without
making direct use of the human body as the stage upon which these narratives
are played out. It is a challenge to utilize inanimate objects to create a
system through which I can continue this exploration with a minimum of
sentiment.
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