About My Sculpture:

Making music, as a vocation, is a relatively new pastime for me. I have been at it for only about 25 years. Long before that - in truth, since I was a small boy - I worked in more tangible art forms, namely drawing, painting, and sculpture. Additionally, I have worked as a professional blacksmith, woodworker, and glassblower. I hold a B.F.A in Sculpture and Glass from The Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA, and an M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I have taught drawing, sculpture, two and three-dimensional design at numerous high schools, colleges and universities, including the Rhode Island School of Design and Skidmore College.

My work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States and in London, England. My most recent shows have been at:  the Gregory Lind gallery in San Francisco, CA ;  The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Brattleboro, VT ( www.brattleboromuseum.org ); Reeves - Contemporary in New York City

(http://www.reevescontemporary.com/)

What follows are two different Statements of "Artistic Intent." They cover some of the same ground yet the essential thrust of each is different. (An "Artist's Statement" or "Statement of Artistic Intent" is usually a one-page "blurb" that is included with one's portfolio when soliciting galleries or teaching positions. As such, it is by no means a comprehensive treatise on an artist's work but, rather, a brief introduction to it.)

A.

Perhaps, the most quintessentially human endeavor is the act of making something in order to accomplish something else - in short, toolmaking. Tools enable us to radically increase our capacity to solve problems and affect our world. Whether intended to increase one’s striking force against an otherwise intractable material, caress the soul with rhythmic tones, or instruct the mind towards moral or intellectual improvement, tools represent an effervescent creativity which is the lifeblood of humanity.

Understanding myself as a toolmaker, or simply a maker, is the primary means by which I am reconciled to the overwhelmingly mysterious condition that is life. I make in order to learn about the nature of things; what results when this shape or material is next to that one?, or what is the progeny of the marriage of this idea with that? I am motivated by the rapture of discovery and compelled to share it, hoping that others might, thereby, also be edified.

The questions, what subjects should find a voice in my work? and, accordingly, in what language(s) it aught speak?, are ones to which I strive to give heartfelt and ethical consideration. For example, the things I make must not lie. They must be beautiful by way of truth and never deception. They must honor the materials of their making, achieving precision without manipulation, and simplicity without poverty. As all tools implicitly have the figure in them, the things I make privilege the physical over the intellectual. They celebrate the act of making things by hand in the hope of reinvigorating the link between the conceptual and the handmade. In order to subvert negative preconceptions about craftsmanship and labor which have alienated modern humans from their heritage as makers, my work is an appeal to the confluence of mind and body, calling for a tactile response possessed of a dignity which is unavoidable and matches that of one's intellectual response.

To know what a thing is, is to know its function. To know a thing's function is to have a primary and indispensable criteria for evaluating the success or usefulness of a thing. Accordingly, to know the purpose of a given endeavor is to have a primary and indispensable means of evaluating one’s success. This idea, balanced with a desire to make in order to discover, rather than to confirm what I already know, constitute the prime directives for all of my artistic endeavors. Within a dynamic structure of logic and ethics, I afford myself the freedom to play, intuit, and discover that which I could not plan or predict. Structure is the music, freedom is the dance.

B.

Short of being able to answer the the big questions like, "why are we here?" and "what is the meaning of life?" our species has enjoyed a relatively whole and concise image of its fundamental nature for millennia. At the root of this understanding has been the notion of humans as toolmakers - creatures who address their needs and desires by first making things which increase their capacity to affect and engage their world. This notion of self as toolmaker functioned meaningfully and equally well in both individual and communal realms of understanding.

Times have changed, however. As a species, human beings seem to me to be in an awkward phase developmentally and evolutionarily. For starters, the idea of “toolmaker,” no longer functions as well for individuals as it does for humans in general. Most people buy what they need or want, rather than making things for themselves. The most potent inventions/tools of our time - computers, spacecraft, and other complex computer driven technologies - are the result of the combined efforts of literally countless individuals, most of whom never met one another or had even an inkling of the whole project. In fact, the pressures and expectations of modern life make it unrealistic, if not prohibitively difficult, for one to address his or her needs in a mostly self sufficient manner. Decidedly, the basic flow of meaning in the lives of modern human beings has changed dramatically from that within which our collective self image coalesced and took root. The development of a new concept of what it means to be human, relevant and appropriate to our modern lifestyles, seems to be lagging painfully behind. The evolution of our physical bodies, also, has failed to keep pace as evidenced, for example, by the plethora of physical ailments which can result from habitually working at a computer: eye strain, carpel-tunnel syndrome, psychological dysfunction and cellular disruption by electromagnetic fields, to name a few. The result of all of this proverbial getting ahead of ourselves, has been a cultural and spiritual breakdown of the most insidious sort; a systematic dissolution of the foundation of our lives occurring on a level just outside of many people’s awareness. Generally speaking, humankind has unwittingly cast itself adrift without a functional paradigm for being human, leaving many grasping desperately for meaning and wholeness.

If the outer world, thus, fails to provide meaning and directions towards wholeness, one must seek and create these things within. The progress of this journey is the manifestation of one’s new sense in the physical world; the creation of forms and images to represent and embody this new consciousness - in a word, new Icons. From the beginning of the human story it has been the business of the artist to unfold consciousness and to give if form. For me, this voyage of discovery is not only joyful, but essential and compulsory. It regards, equally, the transformation of individuals and community in a manner that advances good purpose and fosters the development of a functional and generative spiritual underpinning for being human.