top of page

Up or Down

(2019-2021)

While living in South Florida I became fascinated with the state of being that exists between the aim of perfection, the state of decay, and the ever encroaching fauna. 

fau exhibition.jpg
exhibition view
pink sculpture 5.jpg
yellow sculpture 3.jpg
hand-built, resin, auto paint
t.stollar_detail.jpg
yellow 4.jpg

The work is not an attempt to recreate natural objects, but instead is interested in the behavior of nature, the repetitive emergence that occurs. In this the work builds upon itself, where my thumb prints become both texture and a record of the individual acting upon the material's malleability and spontaneity, where the work becomes a recording device of the processes surrounding it, capturing what Jospeh Needham (1985) designates as, "organic pattern". The work forms through repetitive motion and start with a reference to  traditional ceramic vessels, yet the clay dictates, through its own nature and chance, the sculpture's final form.

 

hand-built, underglaze
22 x 12 x 11"
sculpture 2020 2.jpg
18 x 14 x 12"
yell - 1.jpg

After the forms are created I use layers of resin to subtly blur the surface texture, and then apply several coats of auto paint as a reference to ideas of perfection. This is the crux of the work then, a contrast between natural formation and the attempt to smooth things over. The title Up or Down is a reference to the duality that exists between beauty and control. 

19 x 10 x 10"
sculpture 2 - 5.jpg
detail
sculpture 2020 4.jpg
24 x 7"
bottom of page