Characters in fairytales, mythology, and popular culture are incredibly important to me whether these characters are traditional and long embedded into our culture or they are new extensions of our collective psyches.
I identify with specific characters for specific reasons at different times. For me, this identification permits me to express parts of myself that I may have lacked the words for before, and therefore, my work becomes an extension of this autobiographical self-creation.
Bethelman wrote in The Uses of Enchantment that: “As with all great art, the fairy tale’s deepest meaning will be different for each person, and different for the same person at various moments in his life” (12). I think that this sentiment can be taken further to include myths, which are by their very nature archetypal and etiological, and characters from popular culture, specifically from the science-fiction/fantasy and horror genres which have become the modern equivalent of the fairytale.
My art, what I create, and how I create it are the ways in which I am able to reassemble my own arguably shattered psyche. Due to this, my work is very personal and often reflects what is happening in my life in a metaphoric way. The monstrous and, potentially, horrific nature of my work manifests the words that echo in my head due to aspects of my personal life that could be perceived as falling outside societal norms: odd, Other, abomination.
The process by which my work is constructed, a process that is closely connected to collage and assemblage, also reflects these ideas. Materials are brought together, ripped apart and/or beaten, and re-pieced to become something that bears little resemblance to the original form.
My art becomes a type of body horror, particularly since the titles of my work are usually names either in their own right, popular culture references, or fairytales/myths revisited. In this way, my large-scale paper pieces, for me, become referential to the places from which their titles have been borrowed, and my smaller-scale metal pieces carry the same sorts of emotion in a less abstracted way.
What an audience takes from my work is highly individualized—which is as it should be. Reader-response theory tells us that we can attempt to anticipate the way an audience will react/interact with a work or a performance, but that, ultimately, an audience will take from a work or performance what they need and find what they have already brought to it. Allowing for this deviation, the multiplicity of readings that can be imposed is vast.
And that is my at-the-moment artist statement. I don’t know about the rest of you, but writing an artist statement is very difficult for me. One day, I might figure it out.
So, this is me, my identity and such, rendered visually in a weirdly hybridized version of Duchamp (Marcel, Marcel), William Morris (“I” Box), and Joseph Cornell’s shadow-box assemblages.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Speaker for the Dead: A Self-Portrait
2008
22″x16.5″x3.5″
paper, wood, metal, felt, photography, beeds, spray paint, fabric, various found objects
As an artist creating representative portraiture in a highly referential, (post) postmodern world that is heavily reliant upon referentiality and the interenet, I think of portraits as representational works meant to capture a person’s personality, his/hers Self, yet in attempting to capture this Self, the artist is also imposing his/her view upon the subject.
Self-portraits theoretically act the same way.
Yet, as we create ourselves, the only ways in which we can express these Selves is to use externalized elements: words, images, colors, songs, etc.
When we create others, we do the same thing.
We Other them, and in doing so, we Other ourselves.
We can never see one another completely: physically or mentally. Even if you have a mirror to show the sides that you can’t see, these are just simulations.
A portrait is not different.
My piece works to straddle the lines between identity and portrait since a portrait is about an imposed identity.
Please feel free to hang about and look at my other work. You can click on their pages on the side-panel located to the right.
I really appreciate what you post. You have a new subscriber now.
My blog is about home remedies for acne
Thank you. That’s very kind.
Hey there, just wanted to say hello!
Hello! Thank you for visiting!