CONTENT
My brain frequently spits out ideas. Many ideas. This is the intoxicating, rapid-fire part of my work. At times, I feel inundated by the volume and intensity of creative generation, but as Linus Pauling said, "the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." Usually, I see an image in my mind's eye and rarely know what it means at the outset. There's definitely a lag time between the time I dream it up until the time I figure it out. Once I commit to a project I generally don't deviate from my original image. For better or worse, it's the way I work. If I was pressed to choose one word to convey the overarching theme of my work, it would be struggle. The difficult and messy process of personal growth, and loss of love, time and health are several specific categories I find myself digging into. Through my art, I problem solve, persevere, grieve and grapple with the inconsistencies and uncertainties in life. By addressing difficult subjects and making them, at the very least, visually comprehensible, and at best, dare I say....beautiful, I am sheathing my raw nerves, sublimating, and attempting to impose order and reason on the turbulence of living.
CRAFT
Just as the idea-generating part of my process is lightning fast, the actualization of a piece is also at an extreme pace, only on the other end of the spectrum. Working in marble, my preferred medium, is very slow. I use old school hand chisels and my wee 1.5 pound mallet. It is a great balancing act. If I don't carve the stone back in a consistent manner for fear of breaking or bruising it, I don't make much headway. Conversely, if I am too aggressive with my chisel, I run the risk of ruining the work. I've also learned that the characteristics of a particular stone have the final say. I have been using marble tiles in my work. I consider the pattern-making methods I use not unlike carving stone sculptures in the round. Both are analytical and methodical, moreso than working in a faster medium like clay. Though working with tiles and chipping away at a block of stone are both done in increments, the resulting visual products are different. I think my sculpture in the round is more emotive, while the tile patterns are more analytical. By combining the two, I approach a topic from reductive and additive means. To tie together the content and craft ends, I am essentially describing processes with processes.