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Studio Fossils, 2018-
Fossils are rarely created within the strata of the earth - and they are just as rarely found. In order for these records of past life to be preserved, a number of factors must be present from the moment of death/entrapment of the subject, and these factors must remain in place for hundreds, thousands, or millions of years, undisturbed from critical thresholds. However, we can replicate a number of these factors using materials and techniques in the art studio: extreme heat, malleable clays, and wet saws. By creating my own fossils, I contract time, and present objects from yesterday, a million years ago. This gains the objects I "fossilize" temporary gravitas, and invites viewers to examine each component with renewed consideration.

Aleatoric Experiments, 2019-

Much of my process is a conversation between myself, material, and circumstance. Rather than force material into forms I dictate, I celebrate the inherent characteristics of each collaboration. Cooling wax has unique properties similar to those of curing plaster, yet not identical. Crystals will grow under certain circumstances, yet that growth will be mathematica, governed by the chemical reactions present more than my hand or concept. I'm drawn to the honesty of this process, and to the foregrounding of the materials involved.

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Fusing Experiments, 2019-

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Metamorphosis of various mineral and material bands within the earth is the result of extreme temperatures and pressures. Heat is one of the most important tools of humankind - with careful application of this force, we cook our food, keep our bodies comfortable in inhospitable climates, and create all glass, ceramic, metallic, and plastic materials with which we build our world. Heat is sometimes used as a source of electric power conversion, pumping current into our devices. Applying heat to various materials is a simple 1:1 procedure that calls to mind the plethora of possibilities within the materials surrounding us. 

Frames of Reference (Tabloids), 2018-

Rock builds upon rock to create various stratigraphic relationships that characterize the geology of a place. But the building of rock is not a one-time event. The atmospheres and materials that make up "rock" are unique players, orchestrating a conversation over thousands, millions, and in some places, billions, of years. This series of works explores strata, or the banded layers of a material. I pour molten metal into a form, filling the void only partially. After the metal solidifies, I pour more in. Where the molten iron contacts the cooler material below, the metal forms turbulences and shelves, sags and wrinkles. I drop various inclusions between these layers, furthering the illusion of geology. Each of these pieces may take between an hour or a week to pour, but this timeframe fades to noise when compared to the eon-spanning process happening beneath and around us at all times. 
To form this latest iteration of the project, I have began to use a two-part cast iron mold I cast for this purpose. The dimensions of the resulting piece are 11" x 17," the standard size of a tabloid print.  This size and ratio calls to mind news or text, and broadens the reference to writing.

In Our Image, 2019 -

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Using photos sourced from the 9 "Top Posts" of certain location tags on Instagram, I create 3D objects through photogrammetry to create user-defined portraits of each location.

Tagent Anchor

Tangents, 2018 - 

Cast iron polygons marked while molten. This growing collection of castings recalls the community needed to successfully conduct an iron pour. As I continue to cast Tangents into the future, they join an ever-widening circle, the repetitive marks within scoring a rough, continuous line. Each marked work lengthens and turns the trajectory, all while joining an ever-widening circle.

Accelerations, 2020 -
Since before we wrote down our histories, humans have stacked stones to mark paths, dangers, burials, food caches, territories, or otherwise communicate common presence and location. While geological forces may leave rocks piled atop one another, they are never as intentionally arranged as the structures built by communities of humans. Cairns broadcast a message: “We are here!” Such temporal marks form this most basic human instinct of leaving records of presence, and allow both individuals and communities to outlast their biological timeframes. This is part of an ongoing project using this language of fused, human-stacked stones and debris to mark space. By using the heat of a ceramic kiln to mimic the temperatures found miles below the earth's crust, these objects are formed into something stronger and stranger than before.
 

Index (Here, Now), 2020
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Abaca paper, rust, cast iron, porcelain, studio till, alfred shale, cement, graphite, South Pole Core from a depth of 25' (approx. 30 years frozen), Nunda sandstone core from 150' below the surface (Devonian age, deposited +/- 400 million years ago), fired Nunda sandstone, crystalized borax, copper, wood, glass, meltwater. 

Artifice, 2019

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Each material that makes up this work is presented in various states of synthesis: they have been extracted, cleaned, reduced, colored, or treated. Smelting and then re-melting the metal; creating the plastics and then receiving the bags from a retailer; cutting, milling, and buying the wood — all represent periods of human time. Geologic crystallization follows similar pathways to the methods I used to grow the Crystal Age, but the time-frames are drastically dissimilar. The two concave forms  of Artifice create an aural experience; a partial enclosure defining an intimate space. The bench between the two castings facilitates communing with deep time. By entering the language of furniture, this work invites conversation: both human-to-human, and human-to-artwork. This piece assists in the physical translation of deep-time action to a rate perceivable to the human body.

Imagined Strata Imagining the Future, 2021

This work is composed of pigmented ferro-concrete and steel, and is located in a small sculpture park in the town of Alfred, NY. The concrete is composed of 10% limestone (Calcium Carbonate) which will in time precipitate out of the unsealed work and form stalactites.
 

Time Becomes Us: Theses on Material, People, Place (...)

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Sherman Clarke and I conceived this participatory artwork for a group show at the Cohen Gallery at Alfred University, titled Won't You Be My Neighbor. We provided a 1' x 1' x 6' empty form, and invited participants to add materials from either provided buckets or their own pockets. The audience built five feet into the six-foot void, creating a stratascape of the community. The work began as a riot of color and textures: saturated plastic-blues, emerald greens, hot pinks, and tangerine-oranges, covered with fingerprints, describing acute angles, stippled with sgraffito, and sedimentary in nature. After firing, all colors muted and browned, edges softened, and lines curved.  The extreme temperatures the entire piece was subjected to homogenized tone and form, creating what now resembles a geologic fragment, metamorphosed. The piece aged.

Canacadea Creek Rundown (Cairn in Situ), 2020

This is part of an ongoing project using this language of human-stacked stones to mark space. To create this work, I collected buckets of rocks from the Canacadea Creek near Alfred University's dumping grounds. Using these stones, I built dozens of cairns in ceramic kilns, and thermally fused each pile together. I then returned the cairn to the site, and photographed the marker atop human-induced geologic-esque features.

Imagined Stratum (Growth/Slough), 2020

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 This work projects the possibility of plastic-heavy sedimentary deposits of the future. Consisting of a 12” x 24” textured cast iron plane intersected by a 3” x 18" iron cylinder, the casting rebuilds a stratum, as if extending outward radially from a fabricated core-sample.

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Clean Break, 2015

This was my installation for the 02015 Governors Island Art Fair. The event, run by the art organization 4Heads, invites artists to display work within and about the vacant residential spaces of Colonel's Row on an island just south of the financial sector of Downtown Manhattan. 

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For this installation, I created a number of wooden sculptures ranging in size from 1/2" cubes to an 18" block of flame elder. Into each of these blocks I interred personal documents, ranging from love poems to school rejection letters, bank notices to parking tickets. I encased these papers within shells of tinted epoxy, pushed into voids and cavities within the natural wood. Cutting, sanding, and working the faces back to smooth facets revealed whorls and edges of the papers, bringing the materials back into the vocabulary of vegetal growth and decay.

Studio Experiments 


 

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