Recent Work
I enjoy the act of composition and assembly much more than the laborious task of fabricating my own parts. I am lazy, yes, but that limitation forces me to discover the latent potential of scavenged parts and, thereby, the surprising resonance between one thing and another where least expected.
I am currently working with oak barrel staves. I originally began using these for themed furnishings for a wine bar, but as I worked with them I became fascinated with their inherently suggestive shape and the undulating surfaces they can generate in series along a plane. That idea is played out along the curved surface that I wrapped around a cylinder for the shaft of Signpost. As I worked freely with the staves I began to appreciate the inherent geometrical complexity of theses pieces whose native design is wholly in service to their original use as elements shaping the volume of a barrel. In addition to the delicate arc of the stave, there is the gentle taper along its length, the chamfered edges and the cross-cut grooves that receive the edge of the barrel head at each end. I conceive my sculptures simply as the serial patterns of these simple arcs in space, and then their more subtle geometrical nuances impose themselves on the assemblage. So, in each piece, I set out toward a general form, but then I go with the flow of the anticipated, but not fully imagined, intervention of their “fit” one to another in the particular arrangement. Once these interventions are discovered in a piece, their strong influence immediately suggests alternative responses to its prompts in future sculptures. As the barrel stave series proceeds I simply follow the flow suggested by the materials. My own generative ideas are simply expressions of what I find latent in the material.
Signpost, 2020
Spiral
Oak barrel staves, PVC pipe
Triple Helix Once Around
Oak barrel staves, stain
Woolly Boolly
2020
Oak barrel staves, stain
Signpost
2020
Oak barrel staves on PVC pipe
Radial 1
2020
Oak staves
The Eleven
2020
Oak barrel staves, acrylic paint
Table
2020, (a holiday from minimalism)
Oak barrelhead, birch veneer plywood, acryllic paint, urethane
