This statement was first published on the occasion of the 2005 Core Artists in Residence catalog and exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Glassell School in Houston, Texas.
It seems that at any moment it’s all very endless and I like this. That said, there’s something about when things flatten out and become transparent. But not transparent in a negative way, more like see-through. It’s like being able to see the infinite layers of things all at once and suddenly while you’re looking this beautiful breeze blows by and the breeze envelops and swallows everything. The breeze doesn’t notice distinctions though; it covers and moves over everything. The mountain, the wave, and the cloud all melt together and everything in the room flattens out.
The work is like this central location that collects and absorbs things. These things are always moving. Things like: Scandinavian furniture design, King Tut, high modernist ideals, household alchemy, narrative strategies, signifiers of progress and civilization, a camp fire, homespun utopianism, customization, set design, giant pumpkin growing techniques, an epic riverboat adventure, and grandiose but failed expeditions.
I like to think about the imaginary space between complexity and certainty. The work helps in this process by courting a belief in things that seem unattainable, unbelievable or impossible but for some reason still feel really worthwhile.
Sometimes it feels quite fruitful to practice re-imagining things, like the possibility of discovering a new ocean.
January 2005
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