Statement

For a number of years I have examined the figure in my work. I focused a great deal of attention on body language and the figure’s ability to mirror or externally manifest inner, emotional states of “being.” After a series of constructed body parts amalgamating imperfect Colossi, I turned inward as an opportunity to investigate internal “body language.”

We speak of our stomachs “twisted in knots” or “hearts skipping a beat” and other outer visions of our internal palpitations and twitches. This loose umbrella of an idea was the start of the Passage series of which Vellicate, Elderly Women and Jazz Musicians, and Cippus are fragments or moments of an internal journey.

None of these forms are specific internal organs, most actually began as external body parts, but as coloration of muscles, sinew, and fascia were applied to the forms the “internal” became more readable. The rich coloration that we have within our bodies fascinated me. The Passages series was not intended as a journey of the digestive tract, blood stream, or oxygen passages but as an excavation or spelunking of the “inner core of being” within our physical and mental caverns. Passage and distance traveled, as well as, the ancient practices of examining the organs of animals, enemies, or sacrifices to read the future all began interweaving through the series.

Near the end of the Passage series, I wanted to come back out to the external but I found it difficult to deal with the figure from a distanced stance. I was caught at the boundary that separates the internal from the external and I began to hover just over its surface. Flesh Field is one of the pieces that I created while considering the use of skin as a “map of being.” The fortune telling aspects of organ readings led my investigation to consider the mapping of the hand in fortune telling, past-present-future, the tattooing of flesh, and experience¹s collection of scars that are perpetrated upon the flesh.

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