Plume

At some point in time someone asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I valued this question. I thought: I would like to travel to existing spaces and be responsible to bring them to a state of completion. Something between being an artist and a consultant. After experiencing James Turrell’s show, “Into the Light” at Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory, in 2002, I was reassured of this naturally evolving series of intuitive impulses. Collaborating with the brilliant Garth Zeglin, PHD for a number years, installing art for the Wood Street galleries and assisting for Kurt Hentschläger for three years contributed to refining my goals and vision.
The short answer is immensely. It’s a clear extension of my studio practice and the closest thing to Tai Chi or Yoga I routinely practice, with regard to helping me find balance and harmony with the world around me.
When I started the “Transmission” series I inadvertently ping’d it from another dimension. To reference “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac”, I have been painting the walls with blood (well, specifically, Heinz ketchup- through the assistance of a grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation) to facilitate its inevitable emergence. Plume, like all of my work, is an extension of an obsessive studio practice. It is where all vectors converged- an optimization of immersion and appreciation for an existing space. Just as Transmission was a response to the 707 Penn Gallery, Plume is a response to its current domicile on the second floor of the Pittsburgh Center for Art.
Bearing in mind “The Futurist Cookbook”, I like to consider myself to be a polite and gracious host. I want my audience to enjoy the fruits of my labor- a distillation of passion, anxiety, frustration and, ultimately, a state of sublime beauty and deeply contemplative introspection. I want my audience to experience an analog of the initial impulse that lead and maintained me through each of my sisiphean trajectories. It’s a bit of abstract poetry, but essentially, if the world has to share it’s space with me, it’s my own way of being honest and polite. I am a being that loves the process of being. There are so many ways of both recording and presenting that. I simply choose not to limit the mediums that I use. The exploratory process of making my work brings me to a state of nearly constant wonderment, like a child naturally experiences. I want to feel that way always. I want to share this feeling with the world.