In the opening image,
My Dad's Shoe, 200?,
I took an old shoe and
carved an image of my
father and my son fishing -
a childhood memory
and a pun on the phrase,
"walking in his shoes".

 

 

Introduction

I am a conceptually based sculptor, mixed media and installation artist. For me, art is a cathartic necessity. It allows me to engage with a certain self-awareness which, in turn, informs everything I create. I am endlessly translating and updating my inner visual language into visual art. My art is an outlet and a way of documenting  ideas, concepts and the designs of my inner world: designs which are synthesized from my experience in the realities of the outer world. I move back and forth between acute consciousness and instinct.

Everything I encounter presents possibilities for my art. Everything has potential. Any and all objects can be used to create something, to make and re-make what I find in the world. But such an approach also means that anything can be a disaster — at least potentially. The process requires searching for the materials that will commit me to original work, and intimately connect me to a self-engendered  vision. The objects or images I contend with are not necessarily the art, but they always function as the language to serve the idea. There is a recognition or re-cognition of the materials to assist in generating a versatile, multi-layered narrative. My intention is to put things together in a way that moves the senses, and creates vivid, compelling, infectious imagery.

One of my first jobs as an older teenager involved working on an assembly line in a factory. This experience initiated a deep suspicion of technology. My earliest sculptures in school used objects thrown out by that factory,  and were created to symbolize to the dehumanizing effects of technology.  I remain a technology sceptic and much of the "jetsam" I seek for my work has been rejected technology; it becomes a "selection of rejection."  I think the greatest threat to the survival of the planet is the unintended consequences of technology — and that concept is never far from my creative thought. Ominousness is a recurring theme.  I'm not a neo-Luddite and am throughly enmeshed with technology, hyper aware of "man's hubris"  as my own and the consequences of my art's larger carbon footprint. 

I have leaned heavily on the history of assemblage, ready-mades and the found object. Perhaps it was spending too many years in the developing world where waste is mostly utilized,  or too many years here in Canada where it isn't,  but I've always had an innate and acute disdain for what the developed world calls “waste.” As a result, "used" objects have been at the core of my work for the last three decades. Some pieces start from discarded images or objects, chosen crow-like from dumps and dumpsters. I have found there’s nothing like garbage picking to ward off the glorification of middle class ideals. I'm almost never sure what I'll find. Mostly I seek objects to mesh with ideas that have already hatched, or things with which I feel an instant and intrinsic connection. I love the challenge the constraints of the material place on the medium, each piece requires a unique, often arduous manipulation to realize its potential.