I’m a by-product of Post-Democratic America…it is within this paradigm shift that I struggle to secure intellectual understanding of the social and political environment around me. From this place, I began a late-in-life pursuit of art as a tool for creating dialogue or Visual Discourse.
visual discourse:
An ensuing exploration or a conversation of ideas facilitated through visual representation.
Identifiable content within an artwork can signal associations and meanings that invoke an understanding or provoke an emotional response anchored in a familiar concept. The series, Political Discourse, utilizes this kind of “discourse.”
The Quiet Discourse series does not hinge on content signals. But, delves into the stories and feelings that can be discovered by juxtaposing unexpected materials, changing scales and harmonious colors.
quiet discourse:
After the Political Discourse series, I sought quiet conversation.
Embedding fabric or cardboard, over-scaled objects, all reviling in quiet textures (attached), revealing the common character of oxidized metal and paint (stapled), examining ordinary objects (squared), and, just wax… trying to find a song (movements).
politcal discourse:
The Political Discourse series freezes a social or political dilemma in time so that the paradox or point of views it presents can be confronted, examined and discussed.
The American flag provides a perfect universal symbol from which to depart. The topics are intended to feel urgent—to address the need for people to engage in dialogue around topics that can be uncomfortable. The hardness of the topics, oppositions of opinions, are softened and made approachable by seeing them in an art form. Disarming, yet approachable. I develop work in the Assemblage genre with hot wax medium; juxtaposing ordinary found or manufactured objects to represent a particular social or political dilemma.