Artist Statement

Every piece is not an individual piece but rather a part of the whole

I originally started my artistic path at the University of Wisconsin Stout where I was studying painting, particularly sumi-e ink painting or zen painting. At the time I was obsessed with chaos theory otherwise known as the butterfly effect. This states that a butterflies wings flapping can cause hurricanes on the other side of the globe, in essence the smallest action can make the biggest difference. I decided to put this theory to the test by traveling to Japan to study in the monasteries and find a sumi-e ink zen painting teacher. What I found instead to my surprise was an origami instructor. Returning to the United States I began pursuing a degree in print, paper, and book making at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The idea of this major was to utilize all the skills I had developed and do two dimensional printmaking on paper to then be folded into three dimensional sculptures. At the university, academic research of the arts teaches a lot of artists technical processes and specifically work that is about the work, where the process is actually the subject matter.

My first 3d printed pieces were created using early photogrammetry/3d scanning software. This would involve 3d scanning a human with a series of photographs into a three dimensional digital object. These scans would often have flaws or glitches of missing data in the 3d model. I saw this as the un-carved block similar to how Michelangelo saw in his marble where a sculpture existed around the stones flaws. I was fascinated with this data loss and how it related to the human experience, particularly in cyber culture. The art and people we see on digital media are presentations, they are not the actual object, not the whole truth but a particularly presented experience. The viewer interprets this curated experience and then creates yet another layer of non-objective but subjective idea of what they experience. 

This fascination of glitched data brought me to exhibit in Zagreb, Croatia with the glitch arts movement. Glitch art is wide field where artwork is created through technology in ways that alter the data. One particular method of data bending that I found interesting was pixel sorting. Pixel sorting involves taking an image and moving the pixels based off parameters or algorithms to create an entirely new image. This trip to Croatia also exposed me to the Additivst movement. Additivism is the combination of additive manufacturing and activism. Though some of their ideas are pretty radical ultimately I connect with their conceptions of using art and 3dprinting as action, to say something. 

My current body of work seeing here today is my pixel series. This work is based off the idea of pixel sorting in that it takes one square, one block and then elongates it, then multiplies it and displaces it to create a new pixel. I take this new pixel and twist it around itself and duplicate it to create a new form, a work of art that is purely expressional and a flow of energy rather than subjective to the human form. This work is about the work itself and the processes found in digital environments.