Inexact Sloganeering: An Artist Statement

             As I make my work aphorisms and banal slogans pop into my head - “casting pearls before swine,” “this too shall pass,” “wish you were here,” and so on.  These phrases occupy a unique position: at once full of wisdom and yet empty through over-use.  Language, here, functions as a series of tangential connections, weaving between materiality, history, language, mythology, and social relations.  We create patterns of language to be employed at a moment’s notice so we may circumscribe the sublime or indistinct.  These configurations fall short of encapsulating the concept they represent, but the repeated attempts belie our impulse to narrate this human experience.  

            In much the same way the realm of jewelry and small metalwork inhabit a space overrun with clichés and mass-produced, meaningless dross.  These intimate objects connect to a collective unconscious of collapsing narratives and meaning: formed, dissolved, and reconstituted within each individual experience.  The layered, yet incomplete, meaning is to be provided by the viewer, the wearer, or the audience at large. To that end, I’m thinking about the push and pull between a building up and dissipation – of objects, emotions, memories, experiences, and value – anything that can collect and disperse.  The interplay of disparate sources of content allows for an infinite possibility of encounters within each artwork.