Artist Statement

            The majority of my sculpture is concept driven and is highly viewer interactive. My concepts are usually derived from some memory that was stirred by the shape of some found object, or from some memento that I have held on to since childhood. These things bring up thoughts and experiences that challenge me and guide me through the creative process.
            There are interactive elements in much of my work that are often derived from my love of escapism, toys, comic books, and pop-culture icons. My outdoor sculptures that are brightly painted are designed to attract the viewer’s attention and convey an opportunity for escapist fantasy and viewer interaction. This is the case for my works entitled Getaway Car, Toy Defense, Solution, Self Portrait, and Creepy Crawley. In these sculptures there is an area in each for the viewer to sit, climb, or crawl through. My interest in creating such viewer involvement comes, in part, from interest in my own body. As a child it was always fascinating for me to fit inside a foot stool, or in between the legs of a chair, or under a bed, rather than on top. I was also captivated by placing action figures inside of the vehicle that was commonly sold separately as an accessory. This concept is most evident in the piece entitled Timeline. In Timeline, I have incorporated a looping video that can only be engaged by squeezing oversized clothespin handles to connect the video feed to the screen. This video depicts me gazing through the eye of a clothes pin as the camera focuses in on my eye and then pulls back out to find me replaced by a young boy. This boy holds a Batmobile in one hand as he passes clothes pins to his mother with the other hand. As the mother hangs clothes, she smiles back at the child. The camera then focuses back through the clothes pin into the child’s eye. As the camera pulls back out, the viewer is again presented with me in place of the child. This work serves as a time machine for me in the way that allows the viewer to return to a moment in my past where I first felt useful and important as I could help my mother with daily chores.
            My sculpture entitled Memory Bomb is intended to appear as both an oversized neglected toy like object and as a water mine. In an opening housed deeply inside, yet still accessible to the viewer, there is an exposed key to a wind up music box which plays Brahm’s Lullby. As this music box winds down, it is intended that the viewer make a mental connection between the pinging of this slowing music box to the ticking of a time bomb. Through this dichotomy I make the statement that past experiences, once remembered, may at times be like setting off a bomb.
            In the work entitled Mother and Child, viewer interaction isn’t as important as environmental interaction. In this piece, I have aligned two spheres in such a way that when rain pours from the mouth of the larger, it feeds into the mouth of the smaller. For me this is symbolic of the sharing of life, nutrients, and emotion from a mother to a child.
            It is not always important to me that my viewer fully understand the concepts that drive a works such as this, however it is necessary that I give my audience a visual and tactile experience worth remembering.
             Lastly, I do often feel that it is important to return to my sources of inspiration in a direct way. Marching Orders and Toy Tank Kit both serve as art objects and as toys as I make use of abstracted anthropomorphic images of a tanks, which serve not as an icon of violence, but as a depiction of myself. I see this image as an accurate depiction of myself as I often pose these forms to depict curiosity, anger, pain, and other emotions that I experience and learn from. A key example can be seen in my work entitled PLAYTOON. In this work there is a narrative depicting one tank firing a shot through another while four others react to that act of violence. These four tanks react in postures depicting anger (as one is turned to return fire), shock (as one is posed backing away from the spent cannon ball), fear (as one is posed with anxiety towards the wound), and depression (as one is moving its way apart from the others with its head pointed downward). The tank which has the wound from the attack flails its cannon skyward in agony.
           As previously stated, it is not as important that my viewer understands my concept, as it is important that they are presented with a powerful experience. For me this experience comes in the final moments of completion and installation as my months of toil disappear into the seemingly effortless whimsy of such work.