Artist & Author

Figments Seen Askance

Most of my work has been conceptual in nature: start with a concept and execute it. But in 2019 I started to dig deeper into process and turned my practice upside-down to begin with materials and without preconceptions, as a way to shake things up. Which materials was I drawn to? What could they do? Not do? Sort of do? Letting the materials choose me and simply help them do what they do revealed their tendencies and proclivities. Out of the corner of your eye they might be moving but are still when spied directly. While they seem to be animalistic or anthropomorphic, when I look hard at them they are just wrapping, coiling, bending, extruding, expanding, draping, and twisting. There are movements, vectors, hints of coming from a place and heading elsewhere. Is it possible to animate the inanimate?

And what can emerge when you take the artist’s concerns out of the work as much as possible, when a piece isn’t made as a vehicle of meaning? When we give the conscious layer a rest in favor of the unconscious and the subconscious? If anything, it may actually bring the process of making that I have closer to your process of experiencing.