l Gallery l l Watch Me l Note Me

I view the process of acquiring and manufacturing the various objects for these sculptures as an integrated part of the art. The acquisition of these materials is not a means to an end. Rather, this aspect of the process brings me into relationship with our material culture and its symbols. Each object is carefully collected during intentional foraging missions and the rare serendipitous encounter. Friends will occasionally give me an object that they view as appropriate to my work, and the very best of these items have had meaningful personal or ceremonial existence in their lives. Rather than simply accumulating random bits of junk, I methodically select objects for their combination of aesthetic and symbolic value. I am particularly drawn to material elements that read as archetypes and mythological reflections of globalizing culture expressed through flows of commercial production, consumption, and discard. I also look for objects that are faux representations of industrial or fine craft production elements.

Although different pieces revolve around specific themes, the effort to harmonize the contradictions of post-modern fragmented existence is sustained throughout. The sculptures are built around one of the most distasteful and disturbing aspects of contemporary Western culture: the ceaseless accumulation and consumption of relatively useless material goods. As a member and unwitting participant in this culture, my life is similarly constructed around this material detritus. The goal, therefore, is always to integrate and transform these fragments into healthy and beautiful life. Collecting these bits and pieces means looking at who we are, and who I am, through the stuff we produce, consume, and abandon.

In this encounter, there is much more to be found than a cult of objects. The avalanche of toys and trinkets, tools and devices, electronics, plastics, and so forth, maintain surprisingly coherent and sometimes ancient cultural myths, stories, and themes. They are strands in an extraordinarily complex web of beliefs that reveal our deepest values, fears, hopes, dreams, and the scripts we expect our children to live by. They are infused with the baggage of the past, the anxieties of accelerating change, hope for the future, and endless expressions of hypocrisy and contradiction. These raw symbolic materials are then set in multi-layered mythopoetic relationship to each other. As the the stories and cultural energies that they carry are brought into proximity, they produce new constellations of meaning, and new possibilities for dead and dying tales. The layering of objects creates a kind of visual poetry that is both directed and open, but almost always carefully considered. The aesthetic affects of their arrangements are always tempered by their symbolic, narrative significance. Of course, good humor is essential to this kind of transformation. I’d be utterly lost without a laugh, and in the last instance, a good laugh may be all that is really left to us.

I have a commitment to using about 90% recycled materials. I try to avoid buying new objects, as I feel that this serves to perpetuate the cultural / environmental / social dis-ease that is part of the subject of my work. The fact that I cannot entirely avoid all new materials, particularly the chemicals, glues, paints, and other art supplies that are required for these sculptures, underscores the integral and holistic challenge that is the basic focus of what I am doing.

As I am the confluence of these global flows of material goods, a small scale bio-industry for their reintegration into a new constellation of possibilities, most of the objects are modified in some way by me. Sometimes the modification is drastic, involving the fusion of multiple disparate parts. Sometimes it is more subdued. Depending on the piece and my vision, I will personally manufacture more or less of the objects that are used. A sculpture like “Victoria” involved a great deal of my own production, while “Out of the Music Box,” relied more heavily on material goods that were collected. I enjoy the fusion of hand-made sculptural elements, molded elements, and found objects. It is in this fusion that new vision, new life, springs into existence. I suppose this puts me in the position of being something like a low level cultural mushroom, fungi, or bacterial colony, feeding off of the dead and rotten bits of industry and reincarnating them with new hand-made souls.

Wishing you depth of insight and the means to express it...
- Joshua

*****
Video of New World Rhythmatism
(A musical martial art with all of the art and none of the martial):

This is The Way- Part I




Visionary Artists is an exciting club for those who have a clear message to explore and transmit through their visions. Join now, and spread the word!

Surreal Society has provoked many wonderful outings into the bizarre and the visionary. This group invites each artist to submit one representative piece.

The-Surreal Arts invites ongoing submissions, but is a bit more selective in the work that is accepted.

Elite artists is a vibrant eclectic artist's club that has helped me to make connections with inspiring art and artists, and find my way around DA.

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