Ossuary, 2020. Road case, acrylic, wire, plastic. Dimensions variable.
Electroexplosive Time Machine to the 70s, 2016. Road case, wood, foam, acrylic, wire felt, silver leaf. Dimensions variable.
Metal Boy On The Road, 2017-2020. Road case, enamel, wood, fabric, acrylic. approx. 36 x 36 x 48 in.
“We must destroy time to become one with it.” – from La Valée, a film by Barbet Schroeder
These works document and establish a symbology of music subcultures (60s/70s rock, Heavy Metal, Punk, Grunge) and document music’s “humanity”. They also provide a means to investigate and meditate on the nature of time (inspired by Buddhist philosophies) and situate music, and the music experience, in terms of its own sense of the spiritual.
The sculptures, installations, and wall hangings emerge from a fascination with nostalgia, and particularly, music's power to evoke intense memories of the past. The road case, a vehicle to transport music gear from one place to another (and a reference to my own past/present/future as a lifelong musician) has been used as the vehicle to instead travel through time. The elements of Rock subculture fashion provide material to construct these memories—denim, leather, pinback buttons, patches. Symbols of the tools (the “axe”) and equipment become important graphic elements in this language.
The pieces embrace the desire to live free of time and reject the inevitable changes over time that can be brutal and disquieting. I am interested in the fact that along with these music subcultures, there always exists a search for a new existence that goes along with it. Experiments with LSD to search for higher planes of consciousness and destroy the ego, rejections of traditional societal structures and commercialism in the quest for a new way of living, an establishment of a new “faith” in which the concert hall becomes the cathedral.