This exhibition titled: Linkage consists of two distinct but related bodies of work. The flat works were made pre-pandemic and are concerned with how digital spaces and platforms, such as social media, have affected society. The paintings are a personal reaction to what I felt were troubling signals simmering within our communities. It seemed that people were finding digital hives which suited their narrative politically and otherwise, constantly occupying and reinforcing their pack while shutting off other possibilities — leading to powerful divisions and fissures within the society that persist today. Although the paintings are abstract, the visual tension between disparate energies (hives) is evident throughout.
The sculptures are very recent works. I began building them in August of 2021, with one exception, “Blue Beacon,” which was completed just before the pandemic arrived in the United States. The sculptures in this show are a personal response to profound personal loss, the effects of a global pandemic, and a divided, unhealthy society. As an artist, the question was simple, is it even worth making art in these conditions? I struggled with the value of attempting to build work when everything seemed to be breaking down around me and inside of me. Finally, I decided I had to try. I wanted to make sculptures that evoked an inner balance and strength despite the difficult and uncertain times we live in. As they began to evolve, I felt buoyed by their presence. Day by day, I could see them develop. I began to feel hopeful that I could deal with my feelings about the world within my studio practice again. The sculptures are about finding inner strength and the paintings are about making sense of a world beyond my control. The basis of this exhibition is The Linkage between these energies.
Broader thoughts on the relationship between the sculptures and the flat works:
The sculptures are totemic, figurative, and architectural. I used various construction strategies to overcome forces of gravity while the clay was soft and avoided issues of pyro-plasticity that can cause failure. When building with clay, gravity is always a dominating force. On the other hand, painting is not constrained by gravity; it provides an opportunity to explore form, line, and color entirely differently. According to their own nature, visual relationships develop in the paintings, which stick in my consciousness. Although initially, I began painting as an extension of my sculpture, it provided a liberating vehicle to explore structures that could not be built but could be experienced through two-dimensional abstraction.
Although the flat work and the sculptures have a symbiotic relationship in my creative process, they are not trying to mimic one another so much as they attempt to reach a broader understanding of structural abstraction. They help each other but do not necessarily look like one another. When building with clay, you start from the ground up, allowing lower areas to dry some before adding to what’s above. Generally, the lower part of a large sculpture cannot be wholly reworked and become something else after hundreds of pounds of material have been added above it. But with painting, any part can be changed at any moment with no constraint. Some of the paintings in the exhibition have dozens of images below what the viewer sees. The physical limits of building with clay and the utter freedom to manipulate paint can each be maddening at times but can also be revelatory. Painting has helped me find new relationships in physical forms in my sculpture. Likewise, my sculpture has helped me find structural resolution in the paintings.
