Artist Statement
Printmaking is an art with a rich history that involves physical labor, and multiples, and is a powerful vehicle for personal expression. This project combines my respect for craft in traditional wood cuts and my personal history. Born into a family of carpenters, I bring an understanding of the value of skill and hard work to the more abstract spatial concerns of architectural space and the flat plane. Space and form are not simply formal issues but are a means of sharing with a larger audience the fragmentation, intensity, and dangers of a job site. Building is a process, a place, and an experience. Construction is very personal to me, but construction can also be seen as a metaphor for our contemporary experience of instability and fragmentation.
I want the viewer to be immersed in the work with several feelings at the time or simultaneously. To understand the emotions that a carpenter can go through in a day on the job working with my father, I have created a series of prints to evoke the experience of the carpentry work that continue to flash through my head even though I am no longer a residential building contractor.
