Objects of Power/Power of Objects.

I explore how the relationships between specific items, their inherent connotations and the manner in which they are presented create meaning. I form relationships to generate complexities and interactions between shape, color, space, motion and symbols that move the viewer/participant through my work; symbolically, the same relationships create thematic, cosmological, and iconic hierarchies.  I use broader cultural mythologies (as these formal and symbolic hierarchies) as a template, which I then imprint personally significant information on to so that I and my viewer can satisfy the fundamental question I am confronting in my work: what makes this different from everything else? 

I like hammers.  I mean I LIKE hammers.  I have a probably unhealthy collection of them , This group are all hot sculpted recreations of some of my favorites., presented above a shiny, silvered glass “Hammer of the Gods.”  The worn and used symbol of labor, above the more overtly powerful and sacred. My most cherished are the my great great grandfathers blacksmith tools and the Estwing my grandfather bought when he returned from the war in 1946.  These are PRECIOUS to me.  Sacred.  Worthy of preservation.  But to all others, they’re just a tool.  The meticulous recreation of some of my collection in glass eliminates the usefulness of the tool and elevates it to a fragile, cherished thing.

Similarly, what happens when I bronze a simple used and worn leather work glove? Why is a baby shoe more worthwhile of preservation than the gloves I use to protect my hands and that I use to make work with? I make the ordinary sacred because I deem it to be so.