If you were not able to attend the reception, this is what I think I said during the gallery talk:
This exhibit is titled “The One About Pop” and you may have
figured out that it’s a show about my dad.
My dad was an awesome guy and he passed away last spring. There were lots of cool things about him but
one of the coolest things was that he had a superpower. He had the power to make people laugh. Now, it may not seem like a superpower to
make people laugh, but he had the distinct ability to make people laugh even
when they did not want to laugh. That’s
pretty tough to do. In the moments when
sadness, grief or stress exerted their evil powers over people, my dad would
fly in and crack a joke, say something inappropriate or tell a funny
story. It seemed to be his way of
reminding people that we should not take life so seriously. Or maybe it was his way of showing us beauty
when we were not looking for it.
We may not be looking for beauty at a funeral, for
example. We may be all ready to grieve
and be sad as we were at my dad’s funeral.
But the hundreds of people who came out to his graveside service all
came to us one by one and told us funny stories about things my dad did, things
he said or crazy situations he got himself into. Instead of sadness, we found laughter in the
beauty of the happiness he brought to everyone around him. It was a memorial that suited him.
My dad’s love of laughter and storytelling are elements I
hope come through my artwork. The
drawings and sculptures in this exhibit very often deal with serious or even
sinister subject matter, but each one has a cartoonish look and a shiny surface
to indicate that it’s not all bad news.
The bright colors and goofy imagery play the role of my dad as they try
to bring a smile to the viewer. The
storytelling through imagery may not be as straightforward as my dad’s stories
were, but the narratives are present in each work. In each piece I’ve arranged for the presence
of a setting, a character or two and a few props. Even though the dots are not all connected
for you, they are present and they wait on you to complete the picture.
My dad is responsible for us being at this exhibit in at
least a couple of other ways. He was the
welding instructor at Swofford Vocational Center for most of my childhood. When I was seven years old he taught me to
weld. This likely sounds preposterous to
you but there was a perfectly logical and rational reason for it. My brothers were both older than me and both
knew how to make themselves scarce when my dad looked like he needed help in
the welding shop he had at our house.
Not finding them, he stood before me and asked me if I wanted to learn
how to weld. I suppose that I was too
small to hold the heavy pieces of steel, so by default he needed me to weld
them while he held them.
This affected me in two ways. First, I learned at seven that I loved making
things - real, three-dimensional things out of steel. I still remember what I made that day and how
proud I was of it. That love of making
things carried over into drawing and eventually sculpture. Second, by learning to weld at 7 and
spending the next 33 years learning from my dad's wisdom, I now have 34 years of
experience in a sculptural material that not many 41 year olds have. Everything I know about steel and welding I
learned from my dad. I was still
learning from him in the months before he passed away.
Still, I did not set out to create a body of work about my
dad. As much as he meant to me, I
figured that would have been a disaster.
I wrote something a couple of months after his death where I compared
dealing with the death of a loved one with eating an elephant. I asked, how do you deal with such a
significant change in your life? The
answer was, the same way you eat an elephant.
One bite at a time. So during the
summer months when I worked on the drawings and sculptures in this exhibit, I
was digesting this change one bite at a time.
Each work then, has some sort of relationship to my dad. Some were born out of funny stories he used
to tell us when we were kids. Some use
imagery that relate specifically to him.
Some deal with things he taught me about work ethic and attitude. There is a piece of him in each and every
work chosen for this show.
As an abstract artist, it is not my intention to create work
that shouts at you and tells you exactly what to think. I have no interest in making work that says
to you “Hey, this is what I am” or “this is what I mean”. Instead, I choose to make work that hints,
nudges and suggests certain ideas or concepts to the viewer. It is then up to the viewer to fill in the
blanks based on their own personal histories and narratives. This approach is more like a visual
conversation between the viewer and the work of art. The art may suggest a thought by way of an
image or a color. The viewer may respond
by thinking that there’s something familiar about that image. Then the work of art may reveal another image
or a contrasting idea. The viewer then
must figure out what relationship the two ideas have and what it means.
Contrary to what I thought when I was a kid, there is much
work and effort that goes into this process of abstraction. There are hours spent working to evolve a
recognizable image in my sketchbook.
Then other images may be joined together to generate new ideas. With so much time and effort devoted to
creating such an experience for the viewer, I hope you will understand my
refusal to simply tell you what a sculpture means. I love for people to ask and I want to you
have those questions, but please do not be offended when I answer your
questions with more questions. I prefer
to know what the viewer gets from the experience. This work is not just about me and my
stories, it’s about all of us and our shared experiences as humans.
