What is my work about?
My sculptures are unexpected combinations of reclaimed objects and raw materials. Within these groupings I examine what makes a space meaningful and why people surround themselves with personal artifacts, symbols, and useful organizational tools. The need to decorate one’s surroundings with symbolic things typically begins in childhood or adolescence. By decorating one’s environment a young person expresses their identity. The placement of familiar things provides a setting of comfort and security. The works I create are surreal combinations of materials that have a specific role in our domestic lives. I upend the context of these everyday designs and decorative schemes. This often results in playful outcomes. In an art context this narrative transforms the commercial and ergonomic design of furniture and materials. When taken out of their original context the materials begin to have a new life. The resulting work is disorienting and unsettling, while at the same time humorous.
Artist Statement
I make artwork by proposing simple gestures of found forms. These inventive scenarios enable me to transcend my everyday circumstances for a moment in time. Frequently we are caught in a fixed routine that revolves around the appliances, furniture, cabinets, buildings and streets that surround us. Like a theater set, these things seem to be encoded in the narrative of our life. At the point where most people redecorate or move, I take that fixed criteria and repurpose it into sculptural forms – to reinvent both its function and meaning. The work that I make is often diverse in its material composition and complex in its use of device. The concepts however are always simple gestures that relate to the use of furniture pieces or items that I have encountered. The pieces stem from a daydream or boredom with a present dilemma. Usually the resulting works hinge on uncanny or whimsical concepts. An element can be tweaked within a common household object to arrive at something completely different than what was there before – offering a statement about our time and culture. Over the past couple of years I have branched out from some of the underlying concepts guiding my original propositions. I have made works in public spaces that utilize outdoor equipment and structures. I have engaged in a body of work that explores the make up of an exhibition space (examining a simple reversal between interior space versus exterior space or public versus private). Basic elements, like lighting, dimension, and building design offer points of direction for these site-specific works. Usually, the ideas for a piece develop around the context of an exhibition space and an audience.
The works that I have submitted for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation application are an assortment of pieces that I have completed in the past year. Many of these works will become components within larger installations or exhibition themes. The door pieces (‘Between Parenthesis’ and ‘Though the Looking Glass’) are good examples. Once exhibited the doors would become part of a larger maze of corridors that are installed throughout a specific space – a labyrinth of signs and punctuations. Another example is the VHS weaving pieces (Storyboards). Though I have shown examples of individual weavings, I would like to create a salon of various shaped canvases and structures. These works weave together the narrative of films in a grid as opposed to showing the linear layout that reveals the arc of the filmic storyline.
Also, I have made a series of wax candles that are cast from pieces of firewood. These candles have been used as add-ons in several larger sculptural works. Included in the Slideroom images are 2 relief pieces that have been developed from this motif (Painting by Candlelight I and II). They depict stacks of firewood that double as tealights on an encaustic painted surfaces. Other new works include stalactite formations and a piece from a recent car show. Within each piece there is a great potential to explore a whole new body of work. It is my goal to develop and exhibit each body of work as the ideas grow and evolve through the years ahead.
CV
Education
MFA 2004 Sculpture Yale School of Art, New Haven CT
BA 2001 Studio Art and Art History Hope College, Holland MI
Solo Projects
2011
Kidd Yellin Gallery, Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY
2010
Picnic The Croatian Council of Artists, Zagreb, Croatia
Projects and Group Exhibitions
2014
Maspeth World of Wheels Knockdown Center, Queens NY
2013
Spring The Willows, Brooklyn NY
2012
The Elements of Style, Bullet Space, New York, NY
R. Maycumber, C. Peterson, and B. Wondergem, site95, Launch F18, New York, NY
2011
NADA Hudson w/ Regina Rex, Hudson, NY
Brainbow Place Gallery Brooklyn, NY
2010
The Language of Space Ligne Roset, New York, NY
Fertile Ground Meeker House, Brooklyn, NY
Happy House – Giftland Printed Matter, New York, NY
2009
DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival Dumbo Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY
Apartment Show (Joshua Smith’s Birthday Show) Envoy Gallery, New York, NY
Armory Show Socrates Sculpture Park Booth at the Amory Art Fair, New York, NY
Last Night Was Great Meeker House, Brooklyn, NY
Tortured Sleep project created for chashama storefront 266 W. 37th St. New York, NY
Waves of Change St. Joseph’s College Alumni Room Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2008
Peekskill Project ‘08 Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY
No Vacancy ABC No Rio, New York, NY
Theory and Practice Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ
2007
EAF07: Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition Socrates Sculpture Park Queens,NY
2006
Alumni Show DePree Art Center Hope College, Holland, MI
Group Show Circus of Books Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2003
On the Trail Artspace, New Haven, CT
Cross Town Traffic John Slade Ely House, New Haven, CT
Grants/Awards
2012
PS 122 – Project Studio Space Program participant
2010
Art in General’s Eastern European Residency Exchange Program – with the
Croatian Council of Artists (HDLU) Zagreb, Croatia
2007
Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship
2004
Rebecca Taylor Porter Award Yale University
2001
Herman Miller Award Hope College
Bibliography
http://hyperallergic.com/52539/9-artists-to-watch-2012-bushwick-open-studios/
Jean Parker Phifer, Public Art New York, Socrates Sculpture Park p.238
‘’Guide to the Internet,’ NY Arts Magazine Nov.-Dec. 2007