Theo
Brooks

Biography - Arte Laguna Theo Brooks is best known for his blown glass carved vessels, which explore his interests in archaeology and palaeontology. His fascination with what lies beneath the surface of the earth, and the traces left by humans and other living creatures, has manifested as an exploration into mark making, one made difficult through the medium of hot glass which can never be touched directly whilst blowing glass. This led him to cutting glass in order to come into a more direct contact with its surfaces, leaving ghosting and traces of the hand through the manipulation of glass by hand on a lathe. Brooks trained in glass lathe cutting and carving under the tutelage of glass maestros Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg in Paris, France and hot glass training with English glass maestro Simon Moore, after completing his BA Honors from the University for the Creative Arts in Surrey, England.Artist Statement - Arte LagunaAfter many apprenticeships in the medium of glass, primarily working with the blown vessel, my focus has shifted to a broader approach to my practice. I have always had a deep interest in archaeology and palaeontology, which stemmed from my Cypriot grandmother’s stories about Neolithic objects unearthed near her village when she was a child. This fascination with what lies beneath the surface of the earth, and the traces left by humans and other living creatures, has manifested first as an exploration into marks and mark making, one made difficult by my chosen medium, as hot glass can never be touched directly. This led me to cutting glass in order to come into more direct contact with its surfaces.Marks left behind show traces of a life lived, whether scratches on fossils indicating a battle, or the marks left on an 18th century Venetian goblet — they present us with a moment encapsulated in time, and this idea completely fascinates me. In a consumerist culture like the one we find ourselves in today, marks, and the human element are often hidden from the objects we use. Nothing is eternal, or meant to last, as we can simply upgrade and discard. The ‘Battutosaurus’ sculpture is the first sculpture I have made with this idea in mind.‘Battutosaurus’ is conceived as a representation of the tensions between the handmade, and the industrial, the technological, and the crafted, the lasting and the fleeting. The sculpture is created through a combination of a design I created on a computer, water-jet cutting, and then worked by hand using traditional Italian lathe cutting techniques, to create texture and rhythm. In today’s world, we often find ourselves struggling between the value of the handmade vs industrial production, evident even in the art world, with the dominance of figures such as Jeff Koons and Damian Hirst, who rarely have direct contact with the making of their work. Battutosaurus is an attempt to bridge that divide; he is made using a combination of modern technology, and techniques that have existed for centuries, and is both universal in appeal, and personal in conception. ‘Battutosaurus’ is the culmination of my interest in exploring the stories left behind through objects. I chose the iconic children’s 3-D puzzle as the form for the sculpture in order to create a narrative that includes not only histories of the earth, but also our own more personal stories. I picked this particular toy for several reasons. Firstly I love the form itself - the curves and the lines that the shape creates. Its popularity and the relationship many people have to it instantly triggers memories of childhood and nostalgia. However, although it is a representation of a dinosaur, it’s more specifically the skeleton of one, which adds a slightly darker twist to what is, at first glance, a fun innocent toy. The interplay between childhood and death in the same object evokes everything that comes between - life, its successes and failures, achievements and dreams lost, and how these broader themes can be presented through objects. I have tried to translate this through the sculpture by super sizing the toy and building it in glass, an extremely fragile and difficult material. The sculpture's name derives from the Italian ‘Battuto’ cutting technique, which I have used to produce the textures on the sculpture. It was important to me as an artist to leave traces of my hand through this mark making process as a way of leaving my own impression here in the world.