As an undergrad I was very interested in dual majoring in the two dimensional field of drawing and painting as well as the multi dimensional worlds (3/4D) that included sculpture and glass but to no avail. It has always been a tug of war because I am a maximalist. I chose to focus on glass and sculpture in college but continued my pursuit of painting and drawing on the side.
Street art and public art has been important to me since I was young. I love how it takes the viewer into another realm for a quick moment. It is a sweet surprise during the every day hum drum and allows the viewer to seamlessly float into ecstasy and then it’s over, like a daydream. My forever goal has always been to incorporate my street painting and glass to create experiences for the public.
While in college the new world of glass enveloped me.
Glass is just as mesmerizing as it is limitless. I became obsessed with the process but knew there was so much to learn before I could make what I wanted to. I quickly fell in love with the potential of optics and surface texture which could transmit light and create refractions that obliterated the boundaries of space.
The themes I dove into in the 3-d realm were influenced by eastern mysticism, physics, vision and cerebral inner working, and higher consciousness. I created glass installations that optimized the optical quality of glass by integrating light and somehow managed to open a door into a new realm. I felt like I was on the verge of something but lost myself into the hustle of work after graduating.
I needed to learn the basics of glass and the basics of life. I spent all my time in the hot shop working as a gaffer, making production, teaching basic glass blowing, and assisting for established artists. The money I made was spent in time taking glass classes at Penland, Pilchuck and Urban Glass. However, after five years of this endless pursuit I was awarded my largest public art project to date. Finally, I could combine my love for painting and sculpture! I was very eager to prove myself and laser focused my energy into this new realm.
That large project was a rollercoaster full of wins and losses. So much was learned but I (am) still a young grasshopper. Unfortunately, public art is not a consistent gig, and I lost my resources to continue working with glass.
After that project I took a short break with glass to pursue public art and to travel. My hiatus from this strict world has allowed me to explore new countries and create large scale murals that have tested my painting abilities. I have really come to understand that our potential is limitless when you challenge yourself.
Serendipity and surprise are part of my work because of the scale and the detail I add so there is always something new to see. Many times the murals I paint are too large to photograph usually taking on multiple planes. The reality of viewing these murals feels more like a quest and often something new can be seen and it feels like finding hidden treasure.
The themes of my mural work have mainly focused on formal representations of nature such as the natural flora and fauna of the area, the ocean including marine life and light reflections. I would love to expand on this and abstract this imagery. I have recently started including a glitch effect to represent movement. I am interested in how movement and perspective can help with story telling. My recent mural “Ponderer’s haven” plays with this idea a bit.
This shift from representational to abstract will help make my murals feel more environmental and atmospheric. By creating a “glitch” in figurative imagery or removing literal representation altogether and combining large scale glass and sculpture to the experience that distorts perspectives I believe the result will have much more of a contemporary design aesthetic and lean towards an architectural enhancement. Artists I admire that have played with spatial optics like this are Carlos-Cruz-Diez, Filipe Pantone, Olafur Eliasson and Yayoi-Kusama. Projection mapping adds an entirely new contemporary and technical feel and is something I am also interested in incorporating at some point.
Through my newfound experiences I have grown my relationship with nature by surfing in Costa Rica and Bali and living in the jungle for a couple years. To be integrated with nature so deeply made me feel way more connected to the earth and in turn much more human. This lifestyle amplifies the natural cycles of life that we tend to look past, such as waking up with the sun and watching it set. I found balance in work and personal life, I could calm my mind, strengthen my body through surfing with the forces in nature and fuel myself with natural ingredients metamorphosing into the best version of myself. This lifestyle emphasized the importance of nature and specifically how the ocean truly is of great influence to me and my life. Water is godlike, it is within all beings, helping us grow and we can’t live without it. What other material closely resembles water not just visually but in it’s matter of form?
During my study at grad school I plan on focusing my work on process such as glass casting, hot formed sculpture and coldworking techniques to produce installations that will play with light in the public by transmuting or reflecting the sun. Incorporating color shifting and reflective materials like dichroic glass and mirror to manipulate light and create reflections that mimic water, prisms that project rainbows and even more unimagined sculptures that play with the concept of interconnectedness, higher consciousness and the similarities we have between our self’s and what is found in nature.
What kind of story telling can occur through installation that help inform the role energy plays in vision and how we perceive sight?
I image formal objects that provide moments of introspection and are optically interesting, I also foresee diving into a large-scale site-specific installation that requires photography and video storytelling. I also believe photos of the reflections and light to be works of art on their own and believe this can be a large area of interest as well.
I have always thought that glass has a life form of it’s own. Each sculpture comes from the same pot, for instance it all is the same material, but that could be said for wood or metal and when you break it down it just goes back to the maker or to the stars. Glass’s optical quality takes on a new perspective, literally. The materiality and ability the interact with light make it the best metaphor for ideas related to life and experience. Personifying glass as a human experience but also using glass as a catalyst to heighten lived experiences are two specific ways I mean to experiment with this material.
It’s the ageless story of vessel and soul and I believe this material can inform us. The vessel which is glass harnesses the power of soul that is light to make reflections, refractions, diffusion, magnification, etc. to provide experiences making the viewer recognize their self in space and time. Usually this occurs best with movement from the viewer, mechanics or projection. I think it would add a veil of wonder to mural work. Activating otherwise still experiences of painting with glass sculpture that interacts with light will create a new artwork throughout the day turning into a time based interactive experience.
Light and glass are two lovers that form something new and unique to everyone, always and I can’t wait to dive into this investigation whole heartedly. I am ready to bring glass back as the main role in my art process for now while painting takes second fiddle. It’s time to finally investigate these ideas I’ve had for over a decade.