Mess Artist Statement

My current artist statement is:

I grew up in an oil town in the deserts of West Texas - a town that experienced crime waves with economic booms. It’s a place that bends to the vicious cyclical nature of commodity and crash where more money means more pregnant kids, more shootings, more backhanded opportunities and the strain on already fragile relationships between people of different races and genders. It is said that we spend the rest of our lives trying to come to terms with our childhood and adolescence, maybe that’s why I make art - to understand where I came from.

Living in such a transitional and pivotal time, what scientists call the Anthropocene, I feel compelled to expose the chain links between the industrial structures that moved us here and the people who carried them on their backs. There is no point at which industry ends and man begins; they have built up and within each other like a scab absorbing a bandage, suspended in liminal time, waiting for the inevitable and painful repercussions. In my studio, objects are born from pain waiting, frustration, exhaustion, rage and the drive to be less ignorant with each passing day. Using ceramics, wood and metal I create figures and landscapes that mimic the dysfunction and destruction of Anthropocentric relationships while simultaneously challenging the systems that created them. These pieces exist in the realms of discomfort and heartache, begging the viewer to relinquish their comfortable blindness to current environmental, social and political issues.

I just need to go through and see if there are any places where I can bring in things from the brainstorming chart to fill gaps.