Please click images for quick reference portfolio and scroll down for selected artwork statements
Images # 1-4 “Yellow Cake, Heavy Water”, 2020
Sculpture/tryptic, Lead and gold leaf, 16” x 16” x 5” ea.
Three cast-lead gold pans mounted side by side appear melted by the very material they are meant to retain and serve as allegory for the primacy of energy and the implication of its pursuit.
As recontextualized artifacts, the pans appear fresh from use in some essential stream. Untouchable and abandoned when they failed, they dripped hot with human need, cooled, and froze. They speak of technological micro-epochs neither resolving or evolving but compounding, holding us wide-eyed to a reality we desperately create but do not control.
“Yellow Cake” is the term for uranium concentrate, a material created in the first step of uranium nuclear fuel refinement. This euphemism is symbolized with 24 Karat gold-leaf covering all melted areas of the lead pans. “Heavy Water (deuterium oxide or tritium oxide) is a specific type of water used in cooling nuclear reactors and references the physical weight of the materials in the work, the historic use of water in early prospecting, and the severity of the collective meaning. Using these terms as title attempts to loose and leverage the viewer from vague understandings towards a terror reality.
Images # 5-8 "Land, Law, Violence, Power: We Deal In Lead", 2018
Installation: Soil, Federal Indian Law Fifth Edition text, lead, resin 21” x 37” x 3” ea.
Four earth-cast archive drawers serve as a metaphoric repository for American identity and its direct correlation to land. Containing 19th century paper firearm cartridges created from pages of a Federal Indian Law Fifth Edition text, a direct relationship is made to the notion of law as warfare by other means. With the inclusion of legal cases dating from the 1500s to the present, an arc of political intent is revealed that holds much of modern society in benefit. The works final feature returns to the primacy of place with the exchanged soil for each casings powder. Thus the overlays of legislative assertion, violent action, and historic romance yield an uneasy truth.
Images # 9-13 "Parcel" series, 2012 to Present
Temporal
installations recorded as a digital photo series, prints on aluminum
24"
X 32"
The Parcel
series is a collection of 12 separate outdoor temporal installations that explore the
ethereal meaning of land and the significance of its purposed designation and
control. Placed at several locations on public and BLM wilderness areas, they attempt
to mirror a psychological or spiritual relationship to environment in the west.
Darkness, eternally a metaphor for the unknown and supernatural, is emblematic
of the landscape romanticized. In the environment cloaked, we foster our
greatest hopes of the undiscovered and un-ventured frontier. Here the unseen
takes the shape of our imagination. In its blackness dreams and nightmares
coexist only to be dissolved analyzed and dismissed with the light of the next
day. A radiating grid or singular parcel
serves as the modern mark of humankind. In the documentation of these momentary
works, dawn never comes to reveal the ghosts as sagebrush or aspirations as
stars. Here we glance at mystery and potential, the notion of a great and
awesome power just beneath our feet.
Images # 14-18, "Decoys" 2016
IInstallation
INFLUX,
Scottsdale Public Art
Life
size wood deer silhouettes, U.V. reactive paint, and steel
The Decoys installation consists of 16 free-standing deer silhouettes
painted in the style of thermal imagery. Constructed of birch panels and
painted with florescent ultraviolet light sensitive paint, the group is
scattered throughout a dormant retail space at the heart of a bustling outdoor
mall in Scottsdale AZ. The title is reference to something that isn’t presented
as something that is, while also eluding to a deeper context. As new
technology allows us to see things we previously could not, we explore a
netherworld of new information. In the example of this installation, technology
not only reveals what is presently un-seen it also affords a glimpse of what
once was. In essence, an image of the past through a lens of the future.
Images # 19-21, "Great Exchange" 2010
Installation
Landscape
painting- soil, livestock glue, asphalt top sealant, industrial traffic
safety yellow
enamel- 5’9” x 4’1” x 6” Chairs- aluminum- 4’9” x 2’3” x 2’1”
A
large landscape painting and two complimenting horn chairs are arranged to
create an installation harkening to the parlor of the nineteenth century
American West. The selection of this genre illustrates connections of material
attainment and conversion as it has taken place in our inherited and
mythological past. The conversion of resources in the service of humanity is a
direct and tangible equation. Unlike classical paintings from the period of
manifest destiny representing land unfettered by use, the painting is
indicative of the civilizations path, the road itself. In contrast it represents
destiny manifest, civilization attained, and the land as material put to
purpose. The two aluminum chairs serve as atmospheric compliments to the
painting. From the history of the cattle yards and slaughter pens, the aluminum
horn furnishings symbolize the legacy and decadence of surplus. Like the
originating cast off-horns bent to form chairs, these too are a form of luxury but
through the uniquely modern discarded material of aluminum, seemingly so long
divorced from its livestock counterpart.
Images # 22-23 "Great Exchange 2, Red-tail Hawk and Golden Eagle Wings, 2015
Kevlar
and carbon fiber
Golden Eagle-
42" x 16" x 4" each
Redtail Hawk- 25”
x 11” x 3” each
The wing series explores the
exchange of material from one form to another. In this case a symbol of
American wilderness is converted through technology from flesh and feather to a
purposed stagnation. With broken planes, the piece has the detail of the animal
it replicates. Displaced feathers un-idealistically rendered in areas that meet
the creature’s body speaks to the animal’s absence and reinforces the trade of
the living and temporal for the ageless yet inanimate. The bio
mechanical spirit in exchange for
advanced human utility.
Images # 29-32, "Rain Catchers" 2011 – 2012
Recycled aluminum; outdoor installation, rain catchers
24’ to 15’ in length
Installation: Biosphere 2, Oracle AZ
As a community-based project installed on the campus of Biosphere 2, Rain Catchers consists of forty cast aluminum rain-gathering devices fabricated from casts of children’s hands. The purpose of appropriating a child’s hand into a water-gathering device relates to the responsibilities that the future generations face. As resource management fades from preference and rematerializes as critical necessity, the burden or opportunity to solve these problems becomes the unique obligation of today’s youth. For these reasons, the child’s hand represents both hope and faith in the human element. Modern technology is represented in its conversion to the enduring material of aluminum. The merger of its form to the funnel and pipe is the intellectual and scientific design that unites the elements to collective purpose. By placing the hands amongst the plant life there is a conceptual synergy between the manmade and the natural. Thus a solution of management is illustrated through symbiotic systems and a solution revealed.
Images # 33-37, "Resource Resist" 2010-2012
Outdoor
Installation
Concrete
and steel
40'
x 80'
like many of my works, Resource Resist functions as an inversion of the natural
environment to the unnatural through design. The installation consists of
sixteen concrete pavers cast from four different terrains found on the
outskirts of the Tucson city-limits, BLM or open range areas. Each mold is cast
as a concrete paver upon-which various additional cast environmental forms are
added. In this way, a material exchange is evident and the viewer is confronted
with the equation in a physical form. If we focus on the feature of the barrel
cactus, the natural organism or signifier of life that would be commonly found
in this location, the feature has been replaced with human intent/function. The
objectification of the living through artistic arrangement and aesthetic
garden-scapes further creates a sense of unease in the displacement and
environmental impact questioning our value of nature.
Images # 38-39, "Respirator" 2009
Installation
Concrete,
air filters, and steel;
24'
x 18'
As an exploration of
symbolic equations, the Respirator
installation deals with a notion of organic/inorganic parallels. In this
example, the air purifier that naturally resides in the desert, the saguaro
cactus, is removed from the exterior environment and brought inward as a modern
technological device by being made entirely out of air conditioner filters. The
intent of the forms is to create a truly alien landscape that is accepted by
its representation of organic life.
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