Artists Statement
From my earliest days I seem to have rebelled against art because it didn’t seem right to honor mostly things which were shiny, new, and what most people regarded as pretty. Thus, though I respected and valued education, I was never fully engaged in the process until I stepped into the classroom taught by a Benedictine monk. He was clothed entirely in black and his teachings were imbued with history and respect for values which had been handed down for tens of centuries. To me, anything which endured the tests of so much time, exuded durability, nobility, and values worth my building upon.
So after Saint Gregory’s Junior College, I joined the monastery and got my BA before starting to teach math and tennis at SGC.
After 10 years of teaching, an after-school hike opened my perspective on art. To be brief, I spotted a very practically-but-beautifully-designed, yet worn, bent, and rusted, piece of cast-off farm equipment. I later learned its name: Buzzard Wing Sweep (BWS). To me, that was beauty; that was true art in accord with the dictum of Polish philosopher Stanislaw Jerzy Lec: “Youth and Beauty are Gifts of Nature, but Old Age Is a Work of Art.” I suddenly felt compelled to honor the BWS. Indeed, it seemed to say to me, “Show me to the world.”
At that moment I became an artist. Realizing that I couldn’t just put a BWS on a shelf and expect people to “Oooh and aaah,” I looked around and started connecting other pieces of what I call “Antique Iron with Character and Sociability.” By Sociability I include the idea of Connectivity. Such carefully selected pieces became my medium. That is, I use items built by a manufacturer of serviceable equipment, but with designs which strike me as interesting, worthy of preservation rather than being melted down, and capable of connection to other such pieces without alteration of their original design or subsequent life changes, often mutilations. The pieces I choose have had many additions to their characters by both the traumas of the workplace and the natural aging process. They are like wizened and wisened senior citizens, still of good mental capacity and eager to pass learned lessons to younger generations.
The pieces I select for my medium, I consider to be works of art in their own right, but when I bring them into the presence of other such dignified characters, they play together like jamming musicians and, voila, a new entity is born!
When I bring several such pieces together, respecting their individual dignity and life experiences, it is like a family reunion which gives birth to a new family project or business. The result is a new sculpture, saying something noble in a new way for a younger generation.
Since I have many duties tying me to San Diego, I have limited access to sources of my raw material, my medium. So in 45 years I have made only 35 sculptures. They can be seen with titles, artist notes, and critical acclaim on my website.
