AMS; member OPA
I grew up in Coastal New England and spent much of my free time in nature and creating much like any other kid who didn't have a lot of friends. My first love was actually architecture and when I planned out my life I was to become a famous architect leading the vanguard of green design and home design concerned with inclusion and respect to a growing population of inhabitants.
It didn't work out that way much like many others who had high hopes unatained. Life decides for you much of the time and you adapt as best you can to hang on until it's over.
My grandfather was best of class in drawing at the now unattainable Ivy covered school in New Haven. When I was a kid he told me "never believe your teachers unless they're right". I suppose that made me a pain in the backsides to the teachers I questioned as I sought my BFA from The Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus Ohio where it was suggested that I create an evolving replication of aesthetics to which it was expected that I become known for. A brand as it were I assumed.
It has always been important to me to diversify my work attempting to make each one as different as the previous as I could in an effort to encompass the complexity of change and the ambiguity of personal experience over the course of my life and it's condensate forming pools of thought on canvas in series' as a natural extension of their creation.
I have a tiring fondness for the home of my Alma Mater. The once pregnant Farmland birthing opportunity has become a reminder of cultural decline and ever more distant dreams. As I continue to Navigate life, the disorder and the unseen begin to disrupt the planned for and thwart effort. The serendipity of opportunity which randomly comes around every so often is appreciated if not taken advantage of through lack of recognition or knowledge. The search for meaning.
Meaning that today is sought after through a prominent False Realism. A false realism which can be seen in all aspects of institutions and persons working to project their desired, if not actual, impressions of shared reality. The personal brand I was to delineate for you as the audience. A brand produced not organically but by design. One you can easily see in the Instagram reality and the politicians' promoting "alternative facts" and dissociated misinformation to help a narrative in attempts to redefine or create reality. Hiding the reality behind maneuvers designed to lead you to different conclusions.
The common denominators that have helped to ground ourselves as we each navigate our environments can be seen in every culture throughout history in the common Pot. Each one unique while maintaining a stasis of "pot-ness" and it's function, unchanging. The sublimation of it's physicality to bring community, warmth, and nourishment. Intangibles brought through tea, water, clay, and fire.
All of which of course are given to us or more accurately, discovered within the land and our ability to learn to live on it. The changing Landscapes from day to day and season to season are part of us in as many different ways as there are attitudes about about our relationship to them. Those landscapes extend into ourselves and the cultures we make. We as well are landscapes and everyone in society interacts with it's complexity, competition, conflict and irony as we navigate through time to each our own conclusion.
