Artist's Statement

As an independent artist spearheading site-specific installations with an ad-hoc mobilized consortium of artisans, tradespeople, laborers, erectors, technologists, lighting engineers, dancers, and all-around “plate-spinners”, the philosophy of my “experiential art”---and what drives my creative work-- is underscored by authenticity, self-awareness and raw, visceral Truths meant to shed light on sensitive subject matter. Laced with wry wit and tongue firmly in cheek, a “suffer no fools” pointing of the finger at society’s ills---a state of affairs we are all both victim and perpetrator is my artistic raison d’ etre`. Being profoundly influenced by the Thought Process and Thought Innovation, my influencing conceptual ideas occur daily as I traverse living, as I think, as I take part, or don’t take part, in this world and what I divine from each of those activities. Erecting artistic pieces is just the physical manifestation of the long, sometimes Sisyphean, and often times visceral process. My approach is an intellectual one of investigation, examination and analyses. My system or process then converts into a creative landscape in which I wish to submerge the attendee in the experience, provoking him or her in a chilling, haunting, and perhaps disturbing manner. The most critical aspect in this work is Truth. I cannot edit aspects of what is uncovered, aspects of myself, of the attendee, aspects of the concept as it would be disingenuous. This work is deeply imbedded in uncovering universal Truths and translating those into vignettes which hauntingly stimulate the attendee. When commencing the academic aspect--research followed by its analysis---a draining and lonely phase--- is only punctuated later by an electricity of hyper-manic magnitude depending on the project’s content. Once this is ready to be translated into vignettes, I develop/design how those will be executed. This creative development phase can manifest as story boards, drawings, sketches, 3D built models, material samples boards,“sound-scape” testing, lighting design and an engineering or more aptly a “marionette-ing”of the experience. Simultaneously, written word is a critical aspect to the installation and is developed in tandem. The goal is to erect an artistic enfilade of multi-disciplinary installation pieces. This creative process then coordinates teams of artisans, tradespeople, and technologies – mobilizing specialists in “bringing my vision to life”. This collaborative effort is part messianic exuberance, part high-wire act and is by far my favorite phase of the process. The team-building, the creative energy exchange is an uptake of artistic “battery charging” fueled by my brethren. All the whilst, jockeying between left and right brain hemispheres, the business of art is being mapped—logistics and operations. Because this is site specific work, the actual art is occurring the entire time but it is not erected until shortly before “show-time”. The exhibition then is built for Opening Night-- requiring nimble, quick thinking skills, problem-solving & conflict-resolution skills, deft mental flexibility & agility and a sprinkle of magic.

Given such, my primary goal as a conceptual artist is to foster thought, contemplation and evaluation via the site-specific installation works as well as performance art along with other ancillary “self-sacrificing” creative “lab projects”. With that in mind, these efforts are intended to trigger or commence a viewer’s own internal questioning of Truth which is captured in whatever the visual landscape created is. My work then is to universalize our experienced pain, sorrow, and loss thereby “leveling the playing field”. In doing this, it bridges humanity and highlights the human condition on an existential level. Fostering this through installation art or other hair-brained Gonzo-Style endeavors simply generates a platform for attendees to question their relationship to the world and the world to them. The net-result may be applying this otherwise seemingly academic system as well as learned valuable research into an intricate creative ecosystem.

As an artistic visionary, hopefully my contribution is a multi-pronged, multi-disciplinary one which is to function in a variety of artistic roles, each with varying capacities and yet with an initial focus on intellectually preparing by investigation, analysis and then translating that to a creative format. The analysis then becomes an instrument or the armature for developing the concepts for building and erecting an experiential show or a performance art piece. An attendee willingly, or by fait- accompli default, participates in experiences during my exhibition. This particular strain or stripe of art can be a grueling process which requires physical, mental and psychological fortitude. At times, a notable “recovery period” ----interacting very little with people, some level of isolation, increasing my need of yoga, meditation and self-care is how I resurrect as a conduit from the experience of purging and universalizing Truths. The net: provocative artistic visual essays of the dark underbelly of society would be considered a success.

This is precisely what I wish to do through panegyric experiential art. A whistleblower at heart, I wish to blow the lid off the glossy headlines of whatever the dujour “new little darling” of current culture is and by doing so, reveal it- whatever that “it” may be, in an unvarnished manner.