All in the Family
 Afterlife Afterthought, gypsum, 2005. Photo by Rudolf Vandommele. |
My mother is a sculptor and painter; my grandmother sculpted in wood, concrete, bronze, clay. I grew up around a ceramics studio where they made all the things we ate out of. I was always surrounded by an artistic environment. My family instilled a sense of doing it and knowing you can do it and not questioning whether or not it's a viable way to make a living. But in terms of what really made me say "Oh my God, I really have stuff to do here," was seeing Michaelangelo's sculptures, and Rodin and Bernini, because they really captured something beyond the materials, something beyond the artificiality. They created a portrait of life, a portrait of something that had the capacity to move you in some ways the way another human being can move you. It was a haunting illusion of life that drove me to no end to want to capture it, to find out what can be said in that context.
Changing Humanity
I don't aim for any particular type of audience with my work. Anything I make—if you have two arms, two legs, and a head in the shape of human, then you're going to relate to it on some level. Obviously, there are fundamentalists both in America and in say, Iraq and Iran that would be shocked by the nudity of my work. Everywhere you have the same stuff going on—it's always the same relationship between people who don't look at things the same way. The figure for me is a way to attempt to bridge it, to attempt to communicate on a different level what the possibilities are, what the potential is for human exchange and understanding. I don't know if art truly has the capacity to change politics, but it does change humanity. And if you change humanity, then politics will follow. I also think it's the challenge of the youth to want to correct as much as they can before they wear out.
 Masochist, gypsum, 2004. Photo by Emil Alzamora. |
I've always had an interest in making something that you could see and understand all at once. Maybe not all the nuances—10 people will have 10 different explanations for a very simple sculpture; they'll all have their own idea of what it means to them. But the idea of communication is very important to me. Not necessarily communicating my thoughts but communicating thought. Agitating the space we live in to stir it up. I love watching people look at my work and seeing the reaction they get. I love making things that people connect with. It's art based on the world we live in as opposed to art based on the artworld.
Consistency vs. Experimentation
A lot of my drawings have a sarcastic, almost silly quality to them, and recently I've begun to translate some of those into sculptures. And many of my sculptures have a more serious tone.
Sometimes people don't know what to do with that. They say, "You jump all over the place." But I've got all that stuff in me, and there's no reason to be too focused on style or consistency when you've got multiple things you want to experiment on and give it a shot. I've got too many things that I want to make, and there's not enough time or energy to do so.
 Core, gypsum with iron powder, 2005. Photo by Fionn Reilly. |
Ideally, everything I make would be life-sized because it relates the most directly to our own experience. When you make something smaller, it's an idea of something else because it's once removed in scale and you have to use your mind to fill in the blanks. Whereas when it's life-sized, there's no filling in the blanks, it's there and on your scale. It's the most direct way to relate to an idea in terms of sculpture if you're doing work with the human form.
Winging It
I don't use models. I usually weld the steel for a skeleton and build up the chicken wire and the foam and apply the first layer of Structolite [a lightweight plaster] and just start sculpting and imagining a lot—for the most part I wing it. I guess I've been very obsessive about studying the body, figuring out how it works and what muscles connect to what bones, just the mechanics of it and how that translates into emotional implications—if a body moves a certain way, if it's feeling a certain thing; and knowing that while I'm sculpting. The most subtle of changes can completely alter the feeling of a piece. And being aware of all that and not having any interruptions or any distractions when I'm doing that. Sometimes I'll do a piece when I'm not quite as focused and I can tell it's a little more reckless, and I struggle with it more.
The End of Art History
I think all of art history has been variations on experiments in formalities: What is the form of something? Now we've reached a point where art history has kind of crumbled in on itself and there's not much room for new isms or big new art historical terms, it's more about art. It's an amazing time to be working because all those formal elements that artists have drawn upon or have committed their whole lives to—now you can grab little bits and pieces of them and use them where you see fit to support an idea. A lot of artwork is leaning more towards ideas than what something looks like. It's pretty good to see. The artworld is somewhere between here and Mars, but it's slowly coming back, reintegrating itself with the everyday.