On the Nature of Rationality and Desire -- mixed media and found objects.
These are a collection of my three-dimensional works on both the student (at Anne Arundel Community College, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Parsons the New School for Design) and personal level. Most of them have been featured in student shows and a few of them in local gallery sculptural exhibitions. The significance of my three-dimensional work thus far relies heavily on its conceptual value; my ongoing project as I created these was an experiment in effectively communicating relatively complex concepts through sculptural forms by way of different modes. I've been trained in a wide variety of media, including industrial steel (both oxy-acetylene and MIG welding), plaster, clay, wire, found object, wood, fabric and textiles, and ice sculpture.
On the Nature of Rationality and Desire (detail)
Untitled
Untitled (detail)
The Hypophrenic Portrait Bust -- head; fired clay with acrylic and graphite surface treatment, base; treated plaster and wood.
The Hypophrenic Portrait Bust -- when we began to work on portrait busts in my sculpture class, I was struggling to appreciate the impetus behind strictly representational art. My elemental justification to appreciate the time and effort I put on this piece was to tell people I was actually sculpting an abstracted teapot. I wanted to express this literally through the piece, so I chose to write 'This is a teapot' in Attic Greek on the forehead of the bust. I decided to use an uncommon language so that the overt message of the text would not distract the viewer from the formal qualities of the piece, but rather perplex and provoke the viewer to investigate more deeply into its meaning.
Inverted Boot Scraper -- mild steel, MIG welded.
Skeleton Hand -- mild steel, MIG welded.
Mandala Machine -- pine and pencils. The assignment for this piece was to design and fabricate a mechanism that displayed recorded time. I made a pine simple crank mechanism on a platform; the very nature of a machine is temporally grounded, in that it performs a function and necessarily refers to the time and space it occupies to execute its task. To integrate the function of mark-making, every single bit of joinery is attached with a pencil segment instead of a dowel. Every joint that touches the paper is sharpened on the bottom so it creates a mark on the page -- not only on the end of the crank arm, but also on the base of the mechanism so as it is swung around its axis it creates a larger circle.
Additionally, the nature of mandala refers to time, in that the Tibetan tradition of mandalas is to peacefully and contemplatively create a painstaking (usually out of sand) mandala design that takes several hours, only to be dumped into the wind or river, in a meditation on the futility of attachment to time and the physical realm.
Additionally, the nature of mandala refers to time, in that the Tibetan tradition of mandalas is to peacefully and contemplatively create a painstaking (usually out of sand) mandala design that takes several hours, only to be dumped into the wind or river, in a meditation on the futility of attachment to time and the physical realm.
This piece simulates three interlocking penrose triangles. The assignment was to fabricate a piece inspired by a myth or heroic story, and I chose the Myth of Sisyphus a la Albert Camus -- focusing more so on the illusory and absurd nature of life and happiness, rather than the typical more overt themes of the myth, like futility or repetition. I decided to make a construction that, when viewed at a very specific vantage point, appears to form impossible shapes.
