assemblages
Ideals of Democracy Splitting the Iron Curtain
Monkey blood, plaster, chain mail, barbed wire, native oak, paint and charcoal on stretch canvas. 44" x 33" x 6" . This piece was created to understand and alleviate the emotional distress off the oppressed people in East Berlin. It was painted a year before the wall was destroyed and part of a show "War Stories."
Oil Cloth
Sack cloth, native oak, barbed wire, plastic quart oil container, glue and paint 66" x 44" x 5". I created this piece around Christmas one year. It started out with glued newspaper ads and evolved into a more definite image of Christian symbology thwarted by the exigencies of modern politics and commerce.
Midnight in Moscow
Magazine photos, paper mache, acrylic paint and U. S. ten dollar bill. 36" x 24" x 3". Another painting from my early "War Stories" series done as Russia was falling under communism. Store shelves were empty and goods were traded on the black market where a Big Mac purchased under the golden archs was rewsold for $10 US.
La Atocha
Acrylic, copper coins, hammered sheet copper on wooden door 56" x 36" x 2". Nuestra Señora de Atocha (Our Lady of Atocha) was a Spanish treasure galleon heavily laden with copper, gold and silver that sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. After a 16-year search, the ship was discovered by treasure hunter Mel Fisher in July 1985, commemorated in a Key West museum.
Fahrenheit 482
This piece is a play on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a futuristic novel where books were forbidden and burned in the public square. Overpopulation is rampant. The masses are controlled by the media and intellectuals are outlaws. Books are considered evil as they allow people to think, so they are destroyed – eviscerating history allowing the vestiges culture to fade away. People in confusion and turmoil are easy to control... Bradbury ascertained paper in books burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, hence the novel’s title.
Proposed censorship of the internet is a growing concern of free-thinking individuals. If the free exchange of ideas is curtailed, grassroots communication about real experiences and real issues would disappear into the morass of controlled media espoused propaganda.
Computer plastic melts at 482 degrees Fahrenheit (250 Celsius). The molten mass in the sculpture’s center represents the censored collective mind of society, softened then congealed, by the mainstream media into an amorphous mass.
This sculpture is composed of computer keyboards, bolted to an aluminum mason’s hawk to represent intellectual disintegration onto the plateau of the working man. The sculpture is elevated on a stand constructed of PVC pipe and fittings secured to a plywood base by way of a central threaded rod, tenuously linking the diminished collective mind with a base of artificial fabrication.
The upper keyboards were melted with a blow torch in stages and allowed to cool in order to create the layered effect. When the right feeling of compositional balance was achieved, the melting was ceased. The sculpture was then primed and spray painted in flat black to accentuate the notion of collectivist intellectual void. Power cords dangle, accentuating the disconnectedness of the individual. Edges of the lower keyboards were left unmelted at the periphery, providing a glimpse of hope in reclaiming lost knowledge with which to rebuild post-apocalyptic society.