MFA Visual Studies Candidate, 2011, Pacific Northwest College of Art
Doomsday Device IV-VI.
Cast polyester resin and aluminum on light table. 2010.
The world in which we live is largely composed of unknowns. Theories describing multiple folding layers of space and time, or the universe bound by subatomic vibrating strings of energy, seek to explain away the unknowns but, invariably, lead to others. Science fact and science fiction rest on a sensitive balance of polarity, and a gentle nudge can easily reverse their positions. My work strives to reproduce that balance, to activate the tension between the known and the unknown, between truth and mystery, curiosity and anxiety.
Formally, this dichotomy often manifests itself in my work as a tension between representation and abstraction. Pieces such as Singularities, a collection of pit-fired clay forms, or Doomsday Device I-IX, a series of cast black resin objects, reference recognizable forms such as stones, architectural fragments or the impression of the human hand. The pieces retain a sense of mystery, while allowing a viewer to project himself onto the work. The pieces evoke relics or artifacts of some ancient or not-yet-formed world, and offer some sense of coming to terms with, and looking beyond, our apocalyptic age.
I seek a limitless space. My multi-disciplinary process is rooted in exploration: a testing of limits, a reaching into the unknown. Much of that exploration manifests itself through experimentation: the manipulation of materials and media through a process of trial and error, to arrive at an unforeseen destination. These explorations rarely move linearly, on a single track, but laterally, back and forth across media and form, building a web of connections. Working in this way, one piece does not directly feed the next, but each feeds each other, moving transversely across space in an open-ended exploration.
Every Answer We Have Sought or Will Seek
Graphite on paper. 50"x119.5" 2010
Total Annihilation
Graphite on paper. 50"x119.5" 2010
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