Let's skip right over the formal stuff where I state my name and age and favorite color, because that's what the profile on this thing is for, and I've already filled that out.
I will tell you that I'm an artist, more specifically, a sculptor. I will also tell you that I want this blog to be mostly about my art, what I'm in the process of working on, what ideas I have for upcoming projects, shows I'm in etc. etc. So, first, I guess you should know a little bit about the work I'm involved in at the moment.
My mother died my freshman year of college, and as one would assume, that traumatic loss found its way into my art. However, after a few semesters of extremely weighty nest/egg imagery, the presence of loss in my work has evolved.
Over the past year I've done extensive genealogical research into my mother's side of the family, and have found roots tracing all over the southeastern United States all the way back to England and Germany. My most recent body of work is about the ancestors I have "met" in my research, and the disconnection I feel from them. The best way for you to understand is to read my artist statement...
I consider my genes heirlooms. I have inherited no great wealth or “valuable” earthly possessions from my mother's premature death, but that does not mean I have inherited nothing, for better or worse. She left me her cheekbones and nose. She left me her short temper and inclination for creativity. She left me her emotional outbursts and a thousand other things. Her death also left a void stretching between myself, the living, and my ancestry. Without my mother I feel a disconnection between these heirlooms that she left in me and the people that she inherited them from.
In this body of work, I use my art as a means to seek out the enigmatic ancestors that contribute to the composition of my own identity. I am drawn to their only physical remains left: the dirt of their graves. I harvest samples of earth from each grave and use them as representations of the part of each person that exists within me. Deep down I understand that I will never really know these people who existed then turned back into dirt long before my time. Yet I still long to understand who my ancestors were, what they felt and thought and looked like. The only place I have to go in my endeavor to reach them is their graves, and the dirt they have become. As I try to bring myself closer and closer to these people, my art gives shape to, and attempts to fill, the abyss between the living and the dead.
So, that's basically what all of the work this blog will involve is about: the abyss between me, the living, and the dead.
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