Artist's Statement 2009
My work uses the rawest of materials to create pieces of highly civilized and abstract beauty. If civilization is the imposition of human direction on raw power so as not to emasculate it, but to channel it into beauty, this is what I'm after.
"I thought, if I could cut this one step out of nature - this is what I want to do - create something that man has touched but hasn't taken over."
I make sculpture of suspended shattered stone. I'm mesmerized by the beauty of the rock, its compelling force. I want that power to remain intact and balance against the lyricism and grace of the suspending cords. The cords carry each rock with a slight vibrato, as a musician plays a stringed instrument. The cascading lines beneath the stone contrast their lyrical chaos with the parallel linear formality above. The work should resonate both with the architecture of the space it occupies, and with the materials from which it is constructed.
"I am interested in the ratio between classicism and chaos."
The weight of the stones form a vibrating set of perfectly parallel lines. These shimmer in contrast to the wildness and the lyricism of the coiled cords falling below. And they are held together by the latent force of the shattered rock.
"The stillness of the piece implies the ability to move, almost a crouch, a waiting to spring, the pause before the surge."
I see my work as drawing and, indeed, dancing, in space. I love the moment in a dancer's leap when, after he has gone up into the air and performed the desired actions, he (or she) pauses for a perfect extra moment. Through force of pure artistic will, a great dancer can stretch that moment, exquisitely, insisting on his power to defy gravity, before coming down. It is that essentially human pushing of the moment, that transcendence from mere craft into willed beauty, that I find spellbinding - and a prime inspiration.
"It is unafraid of beauty… And somehow torn from time. To absorb this sculpture is to leave the twittering here and now. It doesn't deal in the voguish, in grievance art, for instance, or fashion or celebrity."
My work is rigorous, stripping away the superfluous and the decorative. I strive for a sort of essence, a clarity that will allow the work grace but not prettiness, rhythm but not contrivance, balance but not inertness. I strive to animate, not merely inhabit a space.
"It's a fine line, isn't it, between telling the truth and parading the truth?"
All of the work is human based, this is portraiture, not landscape. However, at base, I strive for the cleanest transcendence. I want the materials to leap to a different plateau subtly, quietly, immaculately. It's a "high art" concept, a striving after a certain abstract, intuitive, visceral perfection.
"What makes his work so eerie is that it feels inhabited. It seems to contain presences. This is, of course, old magic. Pygmalion in the myth made cold marble come alive. The seated Lincoln on the Mall, far more than a chunk of stone, seems sleepless in his pondering. Most modernist abstraction shuns that tone of wizardry. This art retrieves it.
Sometimes works of art transcend the stuff they're made of. What's required is belief. 'if you believe strongly you can pump life into materials. You can, you really can, see them lifting off the ground like some hot-air balloon.' "
