Archive

The Handmade Series is a body of work where the title implies a physical process to produce the work of art. These objects were made with plaster by holding the liquid mixture until it set up, leaving a negative of my hands. To push my ironic take on the perception of handmade art, an image transfer and photograph of the object are hung directly above the object that rests on a wood platform. For the image transfer process, I attached a photocopy onto a piece of contact paper and soaked it in water to remove the paper, leaving a clear image that was adhered to a wooden surface. Each piece begins with a “handmade” object which becomes more and more detached from the physical touch of the process, ending with a photograph, ultimately leaving the viewer to contemplate the definition and value of handmade art.

The serious edge of Formal theory has led me to create a series where I appropriate commercial expanding insulating foam and repurpose it in the Foamalism series. These sculptures are made to be “nice to look at,” as formal art often is, but they also utilize a play on words using humor to comment on the self-consciously serious nature of this and by extension, much artistic theory.

The Process investigates how art objects come to exist. By photographing the process of construction, I document the steps of constructing a wood panel. These photographs are then transferred onto a wood panel, so that each piece displays a history of its own making. I have additionally included a predella panel to provide viewers with the constructive narrative of the steps involved in the making of the work.

The Ingot series explores sculptural processes including and questioning the “value” of metal casting. Quarter Ingot is a piece developed from the process of bronze casting—an ingot being the initial, utilitarian state of bronze. By making a mold of an ingot, I started with a “full” Ingot and ended with a hollow version of the initial form. I then used “anti-bronze” cold-cast sculptural and ceramic slip-casting techniques in Plaster Ingots and Ceramic Ingots, creating an ironic perception of an ingot. Shower Ingot then shifts the context of an ingot away from a fine art material to an everyday object and place, juxtaposing the tough nature of metal casting with the soft, gentle feel of body soap. River Ingots and Baking Ingots are further explorations of an ingot in nature and in the home.

In Dalí is Genius, I have interpreted an anecdote from art lore as a work of art. It references the quote Salvador Dalí is reported to have whispered at many of his openings, “Dalí is Genius.” This piece plays with the pictorial language of a dolly handcart and the various languages that Salvador Dalí spoke.

Using the two-dimensional picture plane, along with multiple processes of sculpture, has led me to produce a series of formally focused “paintings.” This series, using the technique of assemblage, combines wood and Plexiglass. I use various carving techniques to sculpturally disrupt the surface of the picture plane. The Plexiglass is used to introduce other ideas of transparency and effects of light. It is also used to focus on color relationships and placement, as influenced by the Color Field Painters. Can this work be categorized under the disciplines of painting or sculpture? Ultimately it can be considered a hybrid between the two. My work questions the formalist ideas of “purity of disciplines” with an ironic twist by integrating the two disciplines of sculpture and painting.