Artist Statements are funny things. No matter how much work and time you spend writing them, they can never be completely right. The usual practice is to delete the old ones and replace it with the shiny new one. But I found that the older statements, while they may not reflect current issues, do shed light on where my head was at at the time.

Artist Statement - November, 2008 

I really do get confused at times. When I meditate, I sense deep tones or chords that underlie my everyday thought processes. The confusion arises when I try to articulate these deep impulses with everyday language, what comes out is a garbled echo of the clarity I feel inside. I understand these feeling/tones are more than just my personal psychological structure, although they are a considerable part of it, they are also the pre-verbal chords of the world I experience that resonate within me and provide the underpinnings of not only my consciousness but the consciousness of the social order we all live within. As a sculptor, I find the clearest communication to be through the direct manipulation of materials.

In my sculpture “Anima” (2008, 8’x8’x6’), threads of unwoven rope coalesce on the floor into a tightly compressed three-dimensional grid that ‘breathes’ upward as it expands and connects into second larger overarching grid; a thick wiry black steel grid that ‘hunches’ the expanding breath back into itself. The feeling/tone expressed is both the expanding breath and the containment/hunch of the protective shell: Soft expansion – hard containment.

My Goal as a sculptor is to get as close as possible to these ephemeral pre-verbal sensations. I gauge success by the degree of presence the sculpture has on me. In my sculpture “Thorn Fragment” (2007, 92"x85"x61") the imperative was to invoke ‘barrier/protection’ through the creation of hundreds of large thorns over a hard steel grid structure. To express this feeling, the thorns had to have a threatening quality to then with a smooth, hard, dark matte finish. I chose unglazed black cast porcelain as the best material for this effect. The supporting heavy steel infrastructure had to have an almost military/fortification quality to it to enhance the protection quality I was after. A bright blue-silver zinc finish was chosen to set the dark thorns off. Now I can stand inside this 7’ high, 600 pound wrap-around structure and feel hundreds of large black thorns emanating from me. I am the barrier. I am held in place and I am protected.

For my piece “Torn” (2005, 48”x72”x48”) I imagined an infinite grid field that coalesced at the intersection points of a proto-house form. Several earlier sculptures used this house form as a stand-in for myself; a self-portrait abstraction that best expresses the feeling of existential containment I feel in an abstract form that can be used sculpturally in many ways. The intersection points of this piece felt like accretions of irritation: House of irritations imposed within a serene infinity. To realize this piece I began to cut hundreds of jagged radial ‘bursts’ out of sheet steel with a plasma torch. I then folded and welded them to conform to the angular geometry of the house form. Each “irritation-intersection” was then suspended from stainless steel cable and hung from the ceiling. The result is a sculpture that carves the house out of space with minimal material in a way that evokes a disquieting effect of a crystallizing irritant within the static geometry of the house form.

As I continue to create new work, my visual vocabulary is increasing and becoming more sophisticated, allowing me to get closer to a faithful externalization of the deep chords that resonate inside me. Making sculpture is the only path I’ve found that brings clarity to the confusion that tends to cloud my everyday existence.

"My purpose in creating these pieces is to illustrate, from as many possible perspectives, nothing less than the process of the evolution of consciousness." 

The only thing that really excites me these days is the exploration of the myriad manifestations of consciousness. Every piece I do is somehow an exploration of some aspect of the process of becoming more human.

As I write this, I am currently working through a series of pieces that use a specific “house” reference. This image has haunted me since my college years, and probably even earlier in a more unconscious way. Every variation, every experiment with different materials and processes bring me back to the same essential, underlying form. 

As I meditate upon this form, I have come to peace with it. I realize now that it is "Me" in a metaphorical context. I am this house, in that who "I" am could be seen as a container for my essential nature, however that might be seen. However, this container can also be seen as a restriction in that it separates me from the continuum from which it emerges from. the four walls and roof line "carves" itself from a preexisting matrix forming the essential duality of subject (house) and object (environment). 

Every piece I make is a direct reflection of my interior struggle with the ongoing process of growing and moving deeper towards some teleological "goal" that I can't even fathom at this point. There are times that it feels as though a deal has been struck between myself and some infinity "out there" that forces me to make these art objects. The deal states that I can't move forward in consciousness unless I document my progress with a series of sculptures illustrating my struggle. Maybe it's like some kind of bread-crumb trail I'm leaving behind so that someone else can find liberation, or at least not get lost in this particular corner of the woods. But that in itself is a pretty major conceit...maybe I'll just get us all lost. Oh well...at least it won't be boring!

As a practicing Buddhist, I have run across many references in the Sutras that relate to my process. But by far the best is one called "The Buddha's Song of Victory" This was what the Buddha said upon reaching ultimate Nirvana under the Bo tree. It goes like this:

    "Many a House of life
Hath held me - seeking ever him who wrought
These prisons of the senses, sorrow-fraught;
    Sore was my ceaseless strife:
    'But now,
Thou Builder of this House - Thou!
I know thee: Never shall Thou build again
    These walls of pain,
Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay
    Fresh rafters on the clay;
Broken Thy house is, and the ridge pole split: 
    Delusion fashioned it:
Safe pass I thence - deliverance to obtain."

Background (1999)

Stephan DeStaebler once said:

"Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working."

Truer words have never been spoken. it's taken a long time to surrender to what it is that I must do. Ever since leaving art school in 1983, I have spent tremendous amounts of energy trying to escape my basic artistic nature. Using the word "destiny" would not be too strong here. I have spent the better part of two decades learning skills to replace my inherent need to create art. I have become proficient at cabinet making, house building, mechanical (heating and cooling), database design, computer graphics, web design, set construction, hot-rod painting, scene painting, faux-finishing, fiber-glass work, interior design work, bronze casting, neon bending, all types of welding, and even blacksmithing. a reoccurring theme with all of these skills is that as soon as I become proficient enough to start making money at any one of them, I immediately become bored and dropped it. 

From where I stand now, I see that all that searching was to show me, unequivocally, that I am destined to create art. All these skills can now be harnessed to do exactly that. 

Since it's become obvious that I have no choice but to open myself up as far as possible and walk boldly into these realms so that I can bring forth these objects into the world. Maybe people will find some value in them. I can't know that. People will find whatever they need to find through an encounter with my work. So be it. 

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