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Inspiration for
the images in my current body of work use as their reference point
the gardens and spaces which are intended to accommodate our
pre-packaged, manufacture-mad world. In our contemporary world,
meditative spaces fabricated for our buildings and our lives reek
of the banal and absurd. Faux waterfalls made of fiberglass
boulders in bank lobbies and parking lots, golf courses with
manicured greens and water hazards at the edge of the Nevada
desert, these images are seen by their creators as serene.
Our view of reality has shifted and
the underlying "nature of things" that in the past we
attached enormous importance to, has been subverted and discarded.
In my work I often play up the humor intrinsic in these examples
of made-up reality. Waterfalls made from old appliances, trees
made of garbage pails, these objects stand in sharp contrast to
the objects we see pantomiming settings of idyllic beauty and
scenes of pastoral landscapes in tailored gardens. These
sculptures are resurrected to life from objects of course
circumstances and of colloquial lineage.
Cascade is a heroic monument to
the banal. It consists of a mountain of used appliances with
gurgling streams running down the face. A reflecting pool competes
the scene with fresh St. Augustine landscaping at the base.
Susanna and the Elders utilizes cast concrete clothing to
reference and poke fun at our western conceptions of paradise and
of innocence.
Other works on first glance would seem
to fit in to any number of our manufactured landscapes, from
Versailles to the hometown garden club. On closer inspection
however we realize that, Fountain is made up of detritus from our
laundry rooms and the concrete cherub is really a ruddy faced boy
with an anemic sequence of "dancing waters" sprinkling
him, or we see that the majestic Standing Alone lights from
the inside to reveal land clearing equipment carved into the skin
of this new breed of tree. My installations abruptly confront this
ironic tendency of ours to imitate nature. With my tongue firmly
planted in my cheek I attempt to take this mimicry to its natural
and absurd limits. |
Endless Appliance
Column
Eric's Tree,
Buffalo Bayou Houston, TX
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