Artist Statement
CVMy sculptures and carvings involve a merging of passion, discipline, and abandonment. I attempt to give myself to the process of the work and follow or pursue it to completion.
I'm interested in making work that is meditative, that balances between the associative energy of abstraction, and the narrative power of totem and effigy images.
I make carvings that are clothed by the associations the viewer brings to his/her confrontations with the work. I try to keep my "art channel" open…in a sense I live an alternative life in the studio…freer, unguarded, open to the larger, less conscious experience. I sometimes make changes on unfinished pieces based on ephemeral intuitions, or that "first morning look" at a piece.
Some of my works are populated by a revolving set of characters, who, as familiar entities to me, allow me to use them as actors on an ongoing basis. In a sense, the works exist in a parallel world to my own, helping me mark my own passage through the years.
My stylist models are Southwest Santos carvings, some American folk art and African carving, and Egyptian funeral effigy figures, as well as the sensibility in certain Japanese wood carvings.
I hope to produce work hat interacts responsively with the transcendent issues we confront, such as our ephemeral state of being, issues of decay and transformation…and of beauty. I am particularly interested in the paradox of spirit being contained within the fragile vessel of the physical body.
