I am an artist living and working in Long Beach California. I am primarily a sculptor who fabricates human-scaled wooden and mechanical objects. Artists whose work inspires me include Tim Hawkinson, Theo Jansen and Martin Puryear. The design of many of my sculptures is determined by the solving of some self-imposed challenge, be it structural or technical, that I have set for myself before constructing the artwork. My current body of work is designed to interact with and respond to its environment. A strong example of this method of working can be seen in my sculpture “Shouldn’t you be in zoom school.”

“Shouldn’t you be in zoom school” is part of a series of sculptures I made where I combined a motion sensor and a repurposed power tool. Previous tools have included a box fan, a vacuum cleaner, and an electric sander. The goal of each work in the series is to create moments of novelty and levity when the previously static sculpture is activated, and the power tool is used in an unexpected way. “Shouldn’t you be in zoom school” was constructed over the course of the last year in quarantine. Reflecting the year in which it was created, it was constructed without a specific end design in mind. I slowly built and designed the sculpture responding to challenges and obstacles of weight, mass, line, and gravity as I encountered them. While confronting questions such as how will I know when this project is finished? What will its ultimate form be? Should I be spending this much time on this and shouldn’t I be in zoom school? A central theme within my practice is a reflection on the impulse to create and on the cultural moment we are living in. I am deeply aware as I make art that it is a self indulgent act and a slightly ridiculous thing for a grown person to do, to spend hours, weeks and years toiling away in one’s studio constructing a motion activated, electric drill powered pinwheel. Ridiculous though it may be, what I am trying to do with my art is to be mildly annoying and disruptive as a strategy to break the viewer out of their thought patterns and to force them to be really present with the work for a few moments. The struggle to engage the viewer is why most art is viewed in largely empty white cubes where there is minimal distraction to compete with the art. There is an attention economy at work as we all compete for eyeballs and time. My sculptural work seeks to win and to bring attention to that game.

Another body of work that I’ve created as a reflection on the impulse to create is my “Drawing From Work” or DFW series which is a collection of small drawings. None are bigger than 8” x 5” and most are as small as 4” x 5.” My DFW series was begun with the goal of maintaining and sustaining my art practice. The naming of this series was deliberate and intentional. Both meanings of the word drawing are intended. Drawing as in a piece of two dimensional art, but also as in pulling from or out of. Like drawing water from a well. Extracting art through the ritualized labor of sitting down and putting pen to paper. It was my hope that work would beget more work as one idea led to the next and 248 drawings later I think it has. What does it take to be an artist? You have to call yourself one and you have to produce art regularly. My DFW series has created a process by which I am able to do that in a way that my larger scale sculptural practice does not. Each drawing within this series leads to the next one as elements from one drawing are repeated and tweaked in the next via an artsy long running game of telephone. Because of that repetition of themes, styles of mark making and imagery each drawing slowly refines and begins to define my artistic language. 

 Art making for me is about experimentation, novelty and bound pushing. The real possibility of my art falling over, breaking, being ugly or simply not working out how I’d hoped is important to me.