A complicated masterpiece...rough edges, disjointed images, unrelated activities, strange contexts.... This is my exhibition Broken. 

 

Broken is a concept I want to examine for its imbedded contradictions. Did we once have a key to understand our relationship with the wonders of this earth? How did we get here? Will we fix what is broken, if it ever was?



 

As I gain direction in art, I draw upon various media by incorporating historic styles with contemporary materials. The cultures visited through my travels provide a rich source of inspiration. Memories of these experiences function as mental snap-shots; a sunset viewed from an airplane, the canyon hiked in Northern Arizona, or experiencing the Polynesian culture where I lived for a year. This incorporation can be seen in the sculpture, “Fijian Culture” where I substituted a type of woodworking called Marquetry in place of bark wood historically used in Fijian Masi design.



The sculpture, “Echo’s Silence,” uses recovered wood, cardboard, and plaster to recreate the natural setting of Antelope canyon forged by the force of water through land over millions of years, a natural setting that calls upon the primal relationships of our ancestors. The hand in the sculpture represents a story from Greek mythology. Echo was a nymph of beauty and music who lived deep in the woods who was torn apart by shepherds. Gaia, the Earth goddess, received her pieces to be scattered across the Earth where all that remained of her was the sounds and voices she repeated of those she last heard. A concept for the key in “Echo’s Silece” can be found hidden in the lines of my poem.



I do not define myself. Refusing to be broken, I reach outside the “box” of identity and look back to see what we are missing. My sculpture has evolved, and continues to evolve, into a type of ethnographic art; a way to bring the human cultural past into the visual now. Poetry, sculpture, and travel bring about an all-inspiring feeling of utopia.

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Enjoy the flow, be broken, and find utopia.