When I was a kid my father once fixed a hole in the exhaust pipe of our old family car with a Coca Cola can (back then soda cans were made of tin.)
After going to art school I would drive around and see modernist works in the landscape.
A Mario Merz here
A Robert Smithson there
And that time I saw a most elegant and poetic Don Judd-like piece behind a warehouse in Tennessee. It was comprised of rubber bumpers mounted to the loading dock-stacked one on top of the other.
I have since these artist’s work in galleries and museums
I make little or no distinction between the two experiences-or venues
What’s of interest to me is the resourcefulness and poetry inherent in our daily lives.
Somehow, against all odds we are able to conjure up the things that we lack-both emotionally and physically.
We make up our world and vision as we go along.
“Love, the moon and murder have poetry in them by common consent.
But it’s in other places. It’s in the axe handle of a French Canadian woodchopper…”
(Robert Frost)
This body of work collectively entitled “I am the cosmos” exists in the space where several aesthetic worlds intersect.
The painting and sculptures are unapologetically decorative and playful.
The subjects are from my life but not about me.
The work is about nature but doesn’t look natural
It is also about culture but doesn’t look cultured
The work is comical and at times down right silly.
Of course many good comedy routines hint at something darker just beneath the surface
The work embodies a do it yourself spirit –like craft projects-or punk rock
Ultimately the work means nothing.
But is about the freedom we allow ourselves in constructing an aesthetic world
Populated by objects and desires that we somehow lack in our daily lives.
