“Hand-in-Hand Watching the Pile of Tires Burn” 2022

STATEMENT

My artworks are internal explorations of the postindustrial midwestern psyche – reveries or daydreams of self, encompassed in the degraded influences of the past and the rusted landscape of the present. The resulting compositions confront the conflict between the today and yesterday of the region, a reconciliation of my shifting identity within the post-industrial ruins that surround me and the cultural ruins that form me. In the work, past and present collide, dogpiling imagery from my life and upbringing in postindustrial Michigan - plastics manufacturing plants, automotive racetracks, pull-barn garages, and yesterday’s signage covering the work like faded tattoos on the neighborhood mechanic. Combining printmaking and painting across paper and panel, these works integrate mediums historically used in or around manufacturing including Enamel, Silkscreen and Lithography. Exploring these depictions, I find it inevitable that the here-and- now blends with then-and-there that I am reflecting upon. An ongoing dialogue with the ideas of a bygone past I never knew – nostalgic reflections on the Fordist boom and it’s monolithic machines of lore. Often combining eras and auras, the artworks create a separation between moments of thought, chaos and calm simultaneously existing within self during reflection. Varying from quiet and tenderly rendered depictions to blurs of color, the works reflect the varied state involved in introspective analysis – at times anxious and convoluted, others calm, clear and contained. The importance of these works is not in the elements themselves but their union - the importance is in the mass and the mess.