Art
BRONZE
Shatter, 1999. Bronze from life cast.
Using plaster embedded in strips, I made a mold of my face while breathing through a straw. The mold was then used to cast three likenesses of my face, which I proceeded to cut up and reassemble.
Rosie, 2000. Bronze from life cast.
Robert, 2000. Bronze from life cast.
The Old God, 2000. Bronze.
This piece was inspired by the Guennol Lioness, a Mesopotamian limestone figure estimated at 5,000 years old.
I wondered about who worshipped this, what that cult involved, and how today we have only fragments of faiths that were, in their heyday, as popular as Christianity or Islam.
I made this piece by first forming a statue out of clay, then making several wax casts of the entire piece. I proceeded to cut and rip the wax casts violently into pieces. I then took these small fragments and reassembled them, so that the statue didn't quite fit, but had the outline of the original. I held the pieces together with toothpicks as I applied the gating, then snipped these picks off after it was cast in bronze.
Hand, 2000.
Here I rather obviously took inspiration from Rodin and his Mighty Hand. I also incorporated relief images of nudes into the sculpture, so that it suggests a fist made of writhing bodies. This, again, was suggested by Rodin's Gates, which I visited at Stanford before making this piece.
Rope, 2000.
This is a test piece I made for the subsequent glove piece. I look a small length of rope and twisted it around a wooden armature, securing it with toothpicks. The rope and wood were then burned out of the investment plaster and produced a rather nice reproduction of the rope texture.
Sailing Gloves, 2000.
Here I wanted to capture the dynacism of pulling rope on a sailboat. I took two old sailing gloves, attached them to a wooden armature and a length of rope, then burned this all out.
The Monster Book of Monsters, 2000.
This piece was inspired by the textbook described in the Harry Potter series called The Monster Book of Monster. Hagrid required this book for his class on Care of Magical Creatures. The book itself was alive, and liable to bite fingers or crawl away on its own. :)
| Pine cone, 2000.
This is an organic burn-out piece using a pine cone I collected right outside the CSUH bronze foundry. Half of the cone did not fully take the bronze, but made a very interesting "interior" view of the cone structure, which actually made the piece more interesting that I had hoped.
The surprise of this piece fit well the advice of my bronze teacher, Yoshitomo Saito, that art should happen rather than be made.
Running With Scissors, 2000.
Here we see the elusive sculptor in his natural environment, a gallery exhibition. I made this piece by taking impressions in clay of an old pair of barber's scissors that I use around the house, then pouring wax into these one-sided molds. I did the same with the tips of my fingers. Then I welded these wax pieces together to imply an inchoate jumble of fingers and sharp metal. Ouch!
Swizzles, 2007.
This was really just playing around with wax sheets. I made one of them conform to the formula of the Golden Mean.
Homage to Matthew Barney, 2007.
After seeing the Barney "Drawing Restraint" show at SFMOMA, I thought I would use his distinctive Field Symbol to make this series.
I started by making three identical Fields in wax. Barney likes to work in petroleum jelly and record how the jelly structures decompose by gravity. For instance, in Drawing Restraint 9, he pumped thousands of gallons of petroleum jelly into a Field mold on the deck of a Japanese whaling ship, let it solidify, then removed the mold. The decomposed jelly shape was then cast in plastic and makes up a large part of the show.
Since wax won't deform much by gravity, I left one of the shapes intact but gently applied a blowtorch to the other two. As they simultaneously began to melt, I inclinded the board they rested on so that the runs would flow in one direction. After a sufficient time, I removed the middle piece and focused on the third, which is the most extensively melted.
ROCK
Hand, 1999. Alabaster.
Snake, 2000. Alabaster.
Two Women, 2000. Alabaster.
Black Hand, 2001. Ethiopian soapstone.
Lump, 2001. Picasso marble.
STAINED GLASS
Winnie the Poo, 2005, leaded glass. For Leigh :)
PHOTOS
SUNSETS
There is something compelling about sunsets that goes beyond the raw beauty and the phenomenon of longer wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation being scattered by the atmosphere. I think a part of us recognizes in a sunset the fact that as we look upon our own world and lives, we see a sunset everywhere we look: the sunset of democracy and America and our civil liberties, the sunset of the environment, the sunset of our jobs and hopes and dreams, the sunset of our species. All these things are racing toward an end with the inevitability of an angry red sun slipping beneath a horizon, leaving the world in a darkness beneath indifferent stars.
MOONRISES
Just as sunsets can be seen as a metaphor for the ending of our world, moonrises offer another metaphor: The rise of the lunatic, the irrational, the dark and mystical impulses that doom humankind.
UGLINESS
There is nothing uglier or more inhuman than suburbs, with their detached single family homes and tacky strip malls, their identical tract houses that suck the very soul out of those who live within them. Here I try to show the juxtposition of natural fields with the spread of suburban ranch house malignancy.
DECAY
I find myself drawn to things that fall apart, for the center surely cannot hold.
This is an old mining cabin at the Malakoff Diggings State Park, off of Highway 49 in the Sierran metamorphic terranes.
Rust at Battery Mendell, Marin Headlands. This door is a little over a century old, yet already has gaping holes.
Wreck of the Peter Iredale, at Shipwreck Beach, Oregon
Warning, 1999.
All around Kauai are the hides of wild boars hung up as a deterrant against other boars invading farmland. I don't know if the pigs think like that, but these hides make interesting signposts along roads.
PATTERNS
Wet Flagstones, Alameda, 2007
I walk by these flagstones off of Park St. nearly every day, but these patterns occurred just after a significant rainstorm.
The textures of these trees interested my eye.
ABSTRACTIONS
This is a side of the vat of colloidal silica for the ceramic shell dipping in use at the The Crucible in Oakland.
FIREWORKS
4th July Fireworks, from Benicia Waterfront
Kauai really is this color. This picture was taken with a circular polarizer filter, but is otherwise faithful to the original colors.
Koi Vey
This page last updated: 1/29/2009
Shatter, 1999. Bronze from life cast.
The Old God, 2000. Bronze.
Hand, 2000.
Rope, 2000.
Sailing Gloves, 2000.
The Monster Book of Monsters, 2000.
| Pine cone, 2000.
Running With Scissors, 2000.
Swizzles, 2007.
Homage to Matthew Barney, 2007.
Hand, 1999. Alabaster.
Snake, 2000. Alabaster.
Two Women, 2000. Alabaster.
Black Hand, 2001. Ethiopian soapstone.
Lump, 2001. Picasso marble.
Warning, 1999.
