Biggie Statement

However distorted the reality; my art is simply a reflection. Focusing on the enjoyment that I derive from the making process, I (like all artists) create from my experience. I am an athlete, a carpenter, a sculptor, a welder and a smith. Physicality and tactility are intimate forces in my life. I cannot help but leave my mark visible in my work.

I have founded my art practice on the exploration of my personal experience as a male growing up in rural Appalachia. Baseball hats, steel-toed boots, pocket knives, and other markers of labor have been objects that I consider defining elements in my life. Accounting for materiality, I often choose to substitute a new material for that of the original object. Mixing connotations by swapping steel for fabric or ceramic for wood, I rely on elements of craftsmanship to impart a brief impression of my prolonged contact with, and relationship to, the original item.

Recently, I have made an effort to move away from clear depictions of the articles concentrated in my past, and have begun an exploration into my present existence. The result is more abstracted and conceptual as I sort through my current experiences as an art-school-dropout-turned-contactor-returned-to-the-realm-of-the-art-student.

I am often drawn to the tangible evidence of time. How do we determine if an object becomes more or less beautiful with time? Does rust or other evidence of survival enhance or detract from the value of the work? Likewise the unspoken nuances of material are ingrained in every culture, and by adulthood we barely need to think about the meanings seemingly imbued in the very body of the material itself. Subverting, disguising, and exposing these nuances in myself, and my social environment, is an ongoing investigation for me. I find comfort in making, ruminating through touch. I feel no shame in my desire to create objects. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a hat is just a hat; but a hat is so much already.