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When we are young, heirlooms passed down generationally from parents and grandparents often surround us. These artifacts are reliquaries of the people who have come before us, intricately carved frames hold their photographs, urns on mantels hold their bone fragments, old toys hold the collective joys of our childhoods. The oddly-dressed strangers staring back at us from behind Victorian bubble glass are our ancestors.
My early memories are non-existent or fuzzy at best, which has become a great mystery and curiosity, as I’ve grown older. Memory is not history, but it is essential to who we are. One of my earliest memories is learning to read a map. Maps were important; a symbol of independence in my family, so topographical arts captured my interest early. What is a map? A tool to find yourself in space, depicted as layers of information, creating a whole picture, much like memory. |
Video courtesy of The Delivery Men.
The Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse
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My initial entry into sculptural art forms came after a long break from intaglio printmaking, which relies heavily on thinking in layers, and my passion for layers is still representing my ideas sculpturally. Conceptually, I was looking at childhood play and how as adults we don't often get permission to really play. Socialization forms a natural barrier to the kind of unbridled impromptu joy associated with childhood. Out of this line of thinking, the Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse, (2015), took shape. I manipulated wood into skeletal layers resembling rocking horses at an adult scale, built to withstand the weight of several adults to encourage play. At each installation with the Horses, the adults refusing to believe they could play made an equal impression on me as the ones who braved it. Each interaction formed an imprint of my work, and I felt as at home with sculpture as I had with printmaking.
How did an idea that started with childhood play get so... conceptually dark? Creating whimsically dark and ominous beasts out of such an innocent childhood symbol and then making them adult-sized has an element of the absurd. Bringing lighthearted fun to a dark topic is not a new idea; shadows exist, and dark and light are within us all. |
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