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ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m an anthropologist by training and an artist by profession. From an anthropological standpoint, my work responds to the ubiquity of electronic screens in our twenty-first century global society. We enthusiastically purchase and upgrade them, then willingly surrender our attention—even to the point of addiction—to content that largely remains outside our control. Spending hours each day working, socializing, reading, playing, even exercising in front of flickering pixilated rectangles of varying sizes is not considered abnormal, unhealthy, or excessive. We cease to notice the incidental messaging that flows from corporate power centers via these visually compelling commodities, into our receptive minds, through our unblinking eyes.
Therefore as an artist, I’m inspired to create objects that provide visual antidotes to electronic screens. Most of my works hang on walls, like paintings, but my medium of choice is mosaic, which is pixilated like our beloved hi tech flat-screens. Moreover, clerical and imperial powers of the ancient world used iconographic mosaics to manipulate the masses, whose wealth was garnered to pay for them. However, in contrast to electronic screens, mosaic technology has not changed much since the Iron Age, although my contemporary adaptation of the medium incorporates non-traditional materials salvaged from our post-industrial society. Most significantly, I create my work for human beings, not consumers. The pleasing aesthetic qualities of my work are intentional, even political, as I offer viewers a still, soothing field to contemplate visually, free of manipulative messaging.
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