Can't go out, so I might as well blog.
My artist statement is something I always wanted to change, but never got around to. Part resume, part mission statement, part artistic raison d'etre, an artist statement is a troublesome thing to write. Yet the idea for this new one came to me when I committed myself to doing the most difficult task of Week 4 of The Artist's Way: Reading Deprivation. Yes, without any books to read, without TV and the Internet to distract me from my thoughts, I found myself composing a new artist statement. And now that I'm snowed in, I finally have time to type it up and post it. Here it is:
I find things with interesting textures and think, I want to make something out of that. The objects I find are often otherwise useless: containers, packing materials, packaging, paint that dried on my palette. They are the residue of our disposable, one-time-use material culture. By making art with these objects, I give them a purpose again. They are rescued, redeemed, revived. I give these impermanent things permanence and transform them to unnoticed to noticeable. I draw attention to the rhythmic interplay of light and shadow on corrugated cardboard, the dreamlike diaphanous nature of plastic shopping bags, the brilliant hues of the bottles that make our packaged beverages seem all the more appealing. And I call this style of working with the byproducts of the products we buy Post-Consumerism.
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