I am by no means the only artist championing sustainability or recycled materials in my work, I am but one of many, but I think my work is fabulous, I have grown my skill for the past ten years to what it is today, manipulating paper with perfection, injecting other found object, using resin in some and creating a variety of shapes and sizes to render the object that much more alluring. My sculptures have a myriad of dimensionality and facets that keep a viewer mesmerized in the discovery of them all.
My work is made entirely with repurposed, recycled, salvaged or up cycled materials, all of them have some assemblage component where the materials used have been saved from their inevitable path to the landfill, my work, like all other sustainable works clamors attention to the incredible disregard to our wasteful actions. Most people don’t stop to think "I am but one person throwing this away"… "What does it look like multiplied by the worlds population?!?"
I do understand the issue with Craft vs. Art and I struggled for a while trying desperately to distance myself from any whiff of craftiness to my work because I found that word disparaging, but in truth craft was in the past a good word, it meant hand made, it meant manipulated it insinuated ability, adeptness, artistry, cleverness, competence and ingenuity. Now it smacks of pedestrianism, banality, commonplace and inane. I want us to take back the word craft, and link it with mastery in such a way that collectors won’t turn their noses up at.
This said, my sculptures are not bowls, baskets or vessels, the shape in some might elude to something like that but they are all different, take Chasing Dreams, Victoria and Freedom of Expression, those are far from resembling anything vaguely familiar to a functional element.
I thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify my work, I don’t usually get the chance to sit down and speak of my work with such candor, nor the opportunity to look at my work with a new set of eyes, ones that I am trying to impress. I am your typical artist, constantly fighting with the ego and the alter one telling me my work is not good enough when facing an idol, the other telling me I don’t need to explain for the work should speak for itself. Then there is that moment, when the two of them meet in the middle and take are real good look at the work, like seeing it for the first time… This was that time. I thank you for giving me that moment, for I do love my work, but I am always busy making it, loving every second of the process, hearing the heavenly sounds in my brain when I am done, and then I move onto the next thing, right away, without pause, and never really taking the time to sit with any of it, for I am far too busy to sit and enjoy. I took a good look at it today, as if seeing it for the first time, it took my breath away at how amazing it looks.
