Artist Statement
Winter 2008


If I told you I was confused, what would you say? Or if instead I told you that I thought we lived in a very confusing age, would you agree?
Science and art-making are both problem-solving ventures and they both have a fatal flaw; the problems never really get solved, they simply branch out into newer problems with greater implications. We get smarter and everything becomes, amazingly, even more mysterious.

I look at my own studio practice as a method of sorting through what I’ve been told is the truth. Here is a small selection of truths:
-Everything is made up of atoms, which has apparently been common knowledge for a very long time. As if that isn’t a sufficiently confusing concept, new technology and a greater understanding of chemistry means that a man in a white coat somewhere can assemble atoms systematically into such wonderfully complex synthetic molecules as Olean, and suddenly I can eat a potato chip and have very loose stools.
-There are a number of laws governing the operations of everything in the entire universe, an idea laid down nearly a century ago. Everything seems to be working fine, but the current best attempt at getting these laws to mesh appropriately involves considering 11 or more dimensions of existence. Incidentally, the ability to fully comprehend this information is beyond the brainpower of all but a tiny fraction of humanity.
-Billions of years ago there was apparently liquid water on the surface of the planet Mars. We know this because we launched a number of robots into space with the intention of landing them on Mars. We somehow managed to not only land the robots on mars, but also to continue using them for data collection for a period of time 15 times longer than their estimated lifespan, providing us with a great amount of interesting information. The primary goal behind this expedition is to establish the possibility of mining on Mars to supplement our dwindling resources on Earth, and also to potentially colonize the planet.

Because our perception of reality is changing so rapidly, I am left wondering if the truth really isn’t out there, or if it is so unbelievable that it becomes incomprehensible using standard systems of understanding. Maybe instead it is up to us to create our own methods of understanding, which is where I find myself when I get to work in my studio.