Prompt 7

What do I want to make? Who am I? What am I interested in?

I have no idea.  I just want to make cool work.  Work that moves people.  Work that makes me happy. Work that I feel good about.  Work that's balanced, thoughtful, thoughtless.  I don't wish to reduce the network of thoughts, emotions, concerns, the network of my mind, the atlas of my psyche to a graph or a simple description.  I'd rather leave it a mystery to myself and others.  It's more fun that way.  I really just hope to explore my mind and let my "work" change and evolve as I do.  I think that whatever I make is a psychic atlas of sorts.  Expression, exploration, and impacting those who come into contact with my "work" are key motivators for me.


I suppose the sculpture above reveals a little bit about my thought process and my way of thinking symbolically.  Recently, with the past two assignments for my sculpture one class, I seem to have developed some sort of interest in the differences and similarities, the contrasts and relationships between childhood and childish things--puzzle pieces, building blocks, etc.-- and more adult and heavy subjects/themes such as death, memory, mystery, uncertainty, hardship, etc.  The above sculpture is an example.

For another sculpture one assignment we were required to use styrofoam packaging materials like the ones that might be used to package and hold in place a television or computer in its box. We had to use these stryofoam pieces as plaster molds, pouring plaster into them to create interesting shapes.  The assignment was to use these methods to create a purely formal sculpture without any intentional symbolic meaning or narrative.

This is what I made--Please disregard the debris in the background as it is not part of the sculpture.  The main two slabs are not necessarily intended to resemble lego bricks, however the resemblance to legos is clear.  This resemblance was not totally intentional on my part.  But I find it interesting that this pattern of interest in puzzle pieces, in the way things fit together, in child's play, in aging, in death, has emerged in my "work", that these conflicting and yet connected concerns have become obvious--I think-- in my "work." Sometimes I find myself humming or singing a song.  Once I catch myself singing that song I often realize that the lyrics and or melody represent exactly how I feel at that moment.  Somehow my feelings and thoughts break through and surface from my subconscious mind; I become aware of them.  I am starting to think that the same phenomenon applies to my work.



I really think that my first and second in-class presentations are the clearest psychic atlases I could make at this point in my life.  But the above sculptures demonstrate to some extent the way my subconscious preoccupations, my feelings, general interests, personality, etc., surface and manifest themselves in my "work."  If you take the time to read into these sculptures and the work below a bit, you might find that they probably reveal quite a lot about me.  So, in a way, these sculptures are mini psychic atlases. I think that the same motivations and concerns that are behind work above and below, or at the very least the same process of my own subconscious motivations and concerns emerging and becoming apparent to me through my work, will be a part of anything that I make in the future.  

I made the above painting in an oil painting class I took at SVA a while ago.  We were learning to mix colors.  I was having a hard time with that and got frustrated.  I wasn't too happy with how my painting was coming along, so I kind of just let loose and went nuts.  It is my favorite painting that I made in that class.

I made this a couple of years ago when I was super baked.  I took a loose piece of board from my bed at home and started drawing.  It's very improvised, so I think it's a good mini psychic atlas.