I am a firm believer that sculpture should first and foremost concern the creation of 3-dimensional, physical objects.  Often, in the contemporary world of sculpture, the act of sculpting takes a back seat to the point that conceptualist works of art that include no sculptural elements are presented in a sculptural context.  While I believe that there is room for this in the world of sculpture, it should not dominate the discussion to the exclusion of traditional object making.

 

The primary subject of my work is the body (human or otherwise) as a vehicle for the exploration of themes which are constant to the universal human condition.  The vast majority of human existence is characterized by trauma, both psychological and physical.  Modern humans have existed for approximately 300,000 years, and it is only within the last century that child abuse, rape, spousal abuse and several other violent activities have even begun to be treated as serious crimes, and not even universally.  There are still many countries where these behaviors are not only tolerated, but often encouraged by religious and cultural traditions.  Legal slavery existed in the world as recently as 1981 (the year I was born), and economic slavery is still pervasive throughout the world.  Even in America, we rely on products produced in slavery-like conditions abroad, to say nothing of our dependence on prisoner and undocumented immigrant labor domestically.  All of this is to illustrate my position that trauma is the most universal and relevant human experience.  My art does not attempt to suggest solutions to these problems.  I feel that that is a job better left in the hands of the people, through political action and policy implementation.  As such, the goal of my research is to understand and explore the nature of this trauma, and even to attempt to find its inherent beauty wherever that may be. 

 

In my approach, I utilize a high degree of realism to express scenarios that exaggerate and amplify the afore mentioned concepts while relying on surrealistic imagery to create visual metaphors for internal and external experience.  As most people prefer to avert their gaze from painful subject matter, my work is confrontational by its very nature.  But it is also engaging.  By manipulating the viewers’ subconscious, and our instinctual tendency towards schadenfreude, my sculpture is simultaneously repellant and ultimately very appealing.  I consider this to be validation of our innate duality, a subject that is also quite prevalent in my work.

 

Through the process of fastidiously modeling every detail of my subjects, and fabricating any accompanying componentry by hand, I form an intimacy with the work that is then transmitted to the viewer.  In pursuit of an understanding of what we find appealing and why, one may arrive at a sort of objectivity through which beauty and revelation can be found in the least likely places.  As such, I approach my work as scientific exploration in which each experiment leads to the next in an ongoing examination of what is essentially human.