ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I have a serious preoccupation with the intuitive aspects of art making. There is an internal dichotomy that drives my creative process on several levels: I’m compelled to make serious statements, but find myself subverting that goal with irreverent humor. Precise execution is integral, yet playful strategies are often a point of departure. Though I toggle between these parts of my practice, the recurring result is work that engages the alchemy of juxtaposed elements, meanings and scale.
Though the execution is very exact, the starting point is often circumstantial. Placing found objects next to each other might act as the beginning of a piece. Other times work comes out of the leftover materials from separate projects or the appropriation of visual material from a swathe of sources. The resulting sculptures, installations, paintings and print media explore themes of metaphysical confrontation and identity while often encouraging dynamic interaction with the audience.
Drawing widely from popular culture, art history, information design, and social and political events, my practice is based on bringing together disparate formal elements to reveal hidden, compelling connections, and seeks to reveal the cultural forces that develop unintentionally in the real and digital worlds of objects, material, and ideas.
The tone of my work – a back and forth between weighty intellectualism and flippancy – is deeply personal. My involvement in the counter-culture movements in the 1960s and 70s led me to question the history of fine art as much as the political and institutional regimes that dominate in the United States, a critique which often gets expressed in the form of humor.
These aspects of my own development have also resulted in yet another dichotomy in my practice – the utilization of destruction as a means for creating. Several pieces have involved the poaching of significant works by canonical artists, which are cut up, re-assembled, collaged, and in some cases, completely annihilated.
Whether I’m meticulously creating or blatantly destroying for the sake of art, the experience of sublimity is the destination, and wit is often the means of arrival.
Previous: ARTIST’S STATEMENT
“An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.” — Jean Cocteau
Thank you, Jean Cocteau, for that fine introduction.
It’s a big deal to write your artist statement. Taken seriously it’s a significant challenge to describe your “essence” – the what and why of your practice, especially for an artist, for all the obvious cliché, but true generalities.
I started reading other artist’s statements and was most inspired by William Evertson’s which read:
“Most simply, I am an artist. I make marks. With ink, dabs of paint, words and flickering electrons.
Similar to remembering details in dreams, I grasp for small fragments of meaning.
Thirty years ago my artist statement would run five hundred words as I tried to describe my work. Currently I’m considering removing the last two sentences.”
I wrote to William to tell him how much I liked it and asked if he would mind if I used it like it is, except for removing all of it except for the last period (.).
I used a six-step exercise I found on the web to come up with three paragraphs that formed the first draft. Reviewing the eighth draft of those three paragraphs I realize it’s sounding way too overworked.
Oh what to do?
I like lists. Let’s try that.
#1 propelled by an intuitive and unconscious aesthetic force
#2 determined to be immersed in the creative process
#3 influenced by automotive sheet metal design of the 50s and advertising design of the 60s, especially typography
#4 irreverent reaction to parochial upbringing
#5 fine art practice informed by graphic design skills and methodology
#6 characteristic reductionist approach
#7 childlike style demonstrates innocence and a tendency to brut aesthetic
#8 use of juxtaposition and interception
#9 occasional flights into realm of sublime
#10 goal of intellectual provocation and interaction
#11 social and political critique
#12 idealistically envision, like many artists, that I have something original to express
#13 exploration of ethical concerns of artistic appropriation in the age of the internet
#14 strong tendency to autodidacitism
#15 fascination with creating a landscape of perplexing enigmas, dichotomies and paradoxes
#16 content to be mystified when the works express metaphysical narratives
Yikes, I didn’t even mention most of what’s on the list, and I’m already on the 10th draft! Talk about process. How many more drafts do I have to make? Well, I’m stopping here for now. You, die-hard artist statement reader, can read on, or settle for, “I just make art”, and read no further.
Throughout my career as a graphic designer, and more recently as a fine art practitioner, I have a powerful predisposition to express myself visually. Drawing, painting, making prints, collages or assemblages, creating computer graphics or planning installations – the actual medium is secondary to a determination to be actively engaged in the practice of spontaneous artistic creation.
I’m led by an intuitive and unconscious aesthetic force, wielding the usual classical artistic tenet suspects including balance, shape, form, light, color and composition. Simultaneously I’m guided by deep-seated skepticism and awe, born specifically by my perception of the human condition and the physical world and the contradictory propositions that each inherently possess. Not unrelated, a relatively secular but still Jewish Orthodox upbringing exerts a strong influence and resonance, and inclination to question everything.
I infuse humor, absurdity, nonsense, travesty, incongruity, irrationality and irreverence in my works, often using a methodology of juxtaposition and intersection, predominately with found, appropriated and purchased objects. With the ultimate goal of motivating participants/viewers to contemplate, interpret, interact and sometimes be outright shocked, inspired or offended. I address personal, social, political, philosophical, religious and environmental issues.
I have a serious preoccupation with the intuitive aspects of art making. There is an internal dichotomy that drives my creative process on several levels: I’m compelled to make serious statements, but find myself subverting that goal with irreverent humor. Precise execution is integral, yet playful strategies are often a point of departure. Though I toggle between these parts of my practice, the recurring result is work that engages the alchemy of juxtaposed elements, meanings and scale.
Though the execution is very exact, the starting point is often circumstantial. Placing found objects next to each other might act as the beginning of a piece. Other times work comes out of the leftover materials from separate projects or the appropriation of visual material from a swathe of sources. The resulting sculptures, installations, paintings and print media explore themes of metaphysical confrontation and identity while often encouraging dynamic interaction with the audience.
Drawing widely from popular culture, art history, information design, and social and political events, my practice is based on bringing together disparate formal elements to reveal hidden, compelling connections, and seeks to reveal the cultural forces that develop unintentionally in the real and digital worlds of objects, material, and ideas.
The tone of my work – a back and forth between weighty intellectualism and flippancy – is deeply personal. My involvement in the counter-culture movements in the 1960s and 70s led me to question the history of fine art as much as the political and institutional regimes that dominate in the United States, a critique which often gets expressed in the form of humor.
These aspects of my own development have also resulted in yet another dichotomy in my practice – the utilization of destruction as a means for creating. Several pieces have involved the poaching of significant works by canonical artists, which are cut up, re-assembled, collaged, and in some cases, completely annihilated.
Whether I’m meticulously creating or blatantly destroying for the sake of art, the experience of sublimity is the destination, and wit is often the means of arrival.
Previous: ARTIST’S STATEMENT
“An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.” — Jean Cocteau
Thank you, Jean Cocteau, for that fine introduction.
It’s a big deal to write your artist statement. Taken seriously it’s a significant challenge to describe your “essence” – the what and why of your practice, especially for an artist, for all the obvious cliché, but true generalities.
I started reading other artist’s statements and was most inspired by William Evertson’s which read:
“Most simply, I am an artist. I make marks. With ink, dabs of paint, words and flickering electrons.
Similar to remembering details in dreams, I grasp for small fragments of meaning.
Thirty years ago my artist statement would run five hundred words as I tried to describe my work. Currently I’m considering removing the last two sentences.”
I wrote to William to tell him how much I liked it and asked if he would mind if I used it like it is, except for removing all of it except for the last period (.).
I used a six-step exercise I found on the web to come up with three paragraphs that formed the first draft. Reviewing the eighth draft of those three paragraphs I realize it’s sounding way too overworked.
Oh what to do?
I like lists. Let’s try that.
#1 propelled by an intuitive and unconscious aesthetic force
#2 determined to be immersed in the creative process
#3 influenced by automotive sheet metal design of the 50s and advertising design of the 60s, especially typography
#4 irreverent reaction to parochial upbringing
#5 fine art practice informed by graphic design skills and methodology
#6 characteristic reductionist approach
#7 childlike style demonstrates innocence and a tendency to brut aesthetic
#8 use of juxtaposition and interception
#9 occasional flights into realm of sublime
#10 goal of intellectual provocation and interaction
#11 social and political critique
#12 idealistically envision, like many artists, that I have something original to express
#13 exploration of ethical concerns of artistic appropriation in the age of the internet
#14 strong tendency to autodidacitism
#15 fascination with creating a landscape of perplexing enigmas, dichotomies and paradoxes
#16 content to be mystified when the works express metaphysical narratives
Yikes, I didn’t even mention most of what’s on the list, and I’m already on the 10th draft! Talk about process. How many more drafts do I have to make? Well, I’m stopping here for now. You, die-hard artist statement reader, can read on, or settle for, “I just make art”, and read no further.
Throughout my career as a graphic designer, and more recently as a fine art practitioner, I have a powerful predisposition to express myself visually. Drawing, painting, making prints, collages or assemblages, creating computer graphics or planning installations – the actual medium is secondary to a determination to be actively engaged in the practice of spontaneous artistic creation.
I’m led by an intuitive and unconscious aesthetic force, wielding the usual classical artistic tenet suspects including balance, shape, form, light, color and composition. Simultaneously I’m guided by deep-seated skepticism and awe, born specifically by my perception of the human condition and the physical world and the contradictory propositions that each inherently possess. Not unrelated, a relatively secular but still Jewish Orthodox upbringing exerts a strong influence and resonance, and inclination to question everything.
I infuse humor, absurdity, nonsense, travesty, incongruity, irrationality and irreverence in my works, often using a methodology of juxtaposition and intersection, predominately with found, appropriated and purchased objects. With the ultimate goal of motivating participants/viewers to contemplate, interpret, interact and sometimes be outright shocked, inspired or offended. I address personal, social, political, philosophical, religious and environmental issues.