SCULPTURESCULPTURESCULPTURESCULPTURE
SCULPTURESCULPTURESCULPTURESCULPTURE
Sculpture
Glass, clay, wood, metal, bone, and many a found object and miscellaneous roadside material, unify to create my sculptural works. I never used to consider myself a sculptor, by any means, and yet now I find it consumes the bulk of my practice.
I often incorporate offcuts and discarded, abandoned materials in my sculptural work; offering to breathe new life and purpose into them through this alchemical transfiguration into art. Perhaps I feel a certain kinship to them, hoping that I too, can be repurposed into something better.
How fascinating it is that I need only decree by my hand and word that something is art, and it shall be so.
The sculptures spawn from stories and memories, seeming to spin their own narratives as they form themselves into existence. They make tangible the invisible, stand as figures of alternative legends and mythos, and pour as uncontrollably from my hands as once only drawings could.
They are creatures of contemplation, investments of time, divided portions of my life consumed by a need to make.
SHROUD
2020
Shroud is a self-portrait which simultaneously portrays its subject’s physical and psychological dimensions of identity through the dual surfaces of a mask.
A face within a face, the individual is inverted; the psychological, emotional portrait of inner turmoils and hopes is manifested through the symbology of an inhuman, monstrous external visage which domineers over the serene, physical self, whose features peer spectrally through behind spikes and horns, from the mask’s inner wall.
kiln-cast lead crystal, copper, cotton ribbon
All thoughts, all feelings, all influences and impacts that lead to the making of this mask are written in its form and structure, and its visual language is imparted by the influences of the many, many years that precede it. An upbringing shaped by the fantastical, the otherworldly, the unusual; of stories and mythos and legends recounted across a page or a dinner table, or in the strokes of a painting that would hang on my bedroom wall. The things I embodied, grew into, found comfort and escape in, would become my dreams and my hopes, and then they would become my face.
SHROUD as part of MUSINGS FROM A DARKENED CORNER in situ at WAGGA WAGGA ART GALLERYShroud, my Shroud, preserves me in a moment for eternity. Its horns – my horns – are large and curving, braced for onslaught, its tusks are pointed and vicious, brow furrowed, features sharp, its eyes are piercing and fierce, its spikes are a persistent, easily stirred anxiousness, and its face is a landscape of channels carved by streams of pain, sorrow, worry, and uncertainty. Yet above all else, it is bold, resilient – unlike me; what I dream of, what I yearn for.
There is deep reality here, and there is a hopeful, optimistic falsehood. It is angry, it is sad, it is frustrated, is woeful, it is strong, it is brave, it is stoic and unyielding in the face of an uncertain future.