Welcome to what I think of as a start, and for you an invitation, to see the work pictured here either in the studio or installed in a physical space, as it should be seen. Sculpture, at its essence, must be experienced while moving, looking, thinking, relating the work to the body and to the room. The work pictured here requires your presence, your eyes, and your brain, and whatever history you personally bring.
Ad Reinhardt’s famous quote “Sculpture is the thing that you bump into when backing up to look at a painting.” is meant facetiously, but carries a kernel of truth. One might back up while looking at a painting to adjust one's visual field. It’s less likely that one would reverse direction in quite the same way while looking at a sculpture. Its temporal nature is what sets sculpture apart from the other arts and what makes it a cousin to dance.
Ad Reinhardt's quote should be updated to “Sculpture is the thing you bump into while staring at your phone.” You are, in all likelihood, reading this on your phone. And while I’m happy to have reached you, I would be far happier to find you, to put it somewhat awkwardly: experiencing yourself experiencing sculpture. Art viewing is, like a walk in the woods, therapeutic, an antidote to our inward-focused phone obsession. I believe that art, and nature, are necessary for one's mental health. So I encourage you to get out and surround yourself with both!
Chains and chain links caught my attention years ago while working toward an installation at PS1 in NYC. I was looking for a way to freely play with materials and mass. When I made my first small studies, I felt that I’d found a new direction in using a form so ordinary, even banal, as a chain. Chains are so suited to sculpture, it was as if the idea had been hiding in plain sight. They carry weight and a physical presence and have an intuitive cohesion, while at the same time being changeable and adjustable. There is a figurative aspect to some of the link piles, entwined limbs, a suggestion of intimacy. These chains are the opposite of chains of bondage and oppression. They were never meant to do the work of a chain. Some of them are particularly fragile; the glass links are a danger to themselves and must be handled with extreme care.
Since the sculpture can take years to plan and build, the drawings and prints are my outlet for new ideas, my chance to be in the moment and to let ideas flow. While many of them are link and chain related, I try to let them go in their own directions. Drawing is what brought me to chain links, and drawing will most likely lead me elsewhere.