I am a sculptor, musician, & sound artist looking for meaningful ways to mitigate one medium while wielding the other. While my training is academic, based firmly in tradition skill and observation, but I have since traveled some distance for...
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I am a sculptor, musician, & sound artist looking for meaningful ways to mitigate one medium while wielding the other. While my training is academic, based firmly in
tradition skill and observation, but I have since traveled some distance for those early
roots to explore new forms of sculpture. As I am both a musician and
sculptor, I seek to find meaningful ways to explore music and sound in tangible
forms. Some of my sculptures audibly resonate as part of this exploration,
while others are silent. Both are represented here.
I’ve spent years trying to
figure out who I am as an artist. In this search, I have moved all over the
United States seeking out forms and techniques - both old and new - as a means
to study art. Initially, I pursued a classical education as I had hoped to join
the vanguard of a new figurative movement in art. I spent years drawing and
sculpting from life, studying anatomy, and casting the human form. While I
still love it – and consider it my home – I came to realize there was an
absence for me in that singular pursuit. I suspected there was something new
for me to discover just under the surface of what I understood to be art.
For me, the moment came when
– while playing an instrument – I had stopped briefly to speak to someone. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it before, but the instrument came to life without my playing it. It was sympathetically vibrating
to the frequencies in my own voice. This instrument - sound sculpture if you
will - played itself without help from me. It was an autonomous object of
sound, much like myself. This was a start. Having been a musician for almost as
long as I have been an artist, I longed for my art to have the intimacy and
immediacy music provided. I never realized that those separate paths could be
two parts of a whole. I came to understand that what I wanted to do was a
wholly contemporary form of artmaking, requiring resources and concepts beyond
my studies up to that time. I sought out an institution that would give me the
support and freedom I needed to marry the disparate paths of music and art.
After a few years of working
as an assistant to other artists, a family tragedy caused me to realize the
shortness and preciousness of life. I decided it was time to move on with mine.
I moved to Chicago to begin my graduate studies in sculpture and sound art.
While there, I began to experiment with different forms of sound sculpture:
singular sculptures with accompanying original musical soundtracks (I’m Not
Your Friend 2013), objects with embedded recordings that relied on their
inherent acoustic nature to house and present new musical compositions (10 Days
2014), and objects related to sound making, but that were utterly silent
(Corpus, Artifacts, and Quartet 2015). These artworks allowed me to move in and
out of the mediums of sculpture and sound as well as experimenting with how
sound transforms our relationship with objects. I learned that sound is the
most intimate of mediums. Not only does it fill a space completely and takes
its shape (as water does a glass), but it also touches its listeners
physically. Hearing - as a sense - is really a modified form of touch. Our
brains translate the physical sensation of sensing vibration into what we
perceive of as sound. I would begin to make sculptures that touched my
audience.