statement

I grew up in a blue collar, working class family. In the past few years, half of the people in my family have faced unemployment or unsteady work; one third of the families on my block have lost their jobs. My dad lost his job when I was in high school. After several months of interviews and disappointments, he finally found another job. He worked more and earned less. Eventually that company went bankrupt and he was out of work again.

The United States has officially entered into a recession. Newspaper headlines are calling this "The War on the Middle Class," the battle of "Wall Street versus Main Street." We hear about this economic crisis in terms of job losses, factory cl0sings, bailouts, bankruptcies, outsourcing, union strikes and unemployment lines. We hear about the increasing number of layoffs each month and the sparse interviews of those people shocked to find themselves suddenly out of work.

My work aims to explore the affects this crisis is having on those families struggling with unemployment. I am interested in what we aren't hearing: the shift in family dynamics, the shame, the disappointment, the pride, the anxiety, the humility, the bringing together, the tearing apart, the fear and desperation, the restlessness, and the hope.

D-E-F-E-A-T.

My work and my life are an amalgamation of media stimulation: researched, reorganized, and regurgitated. Being a child of the 90s, I was weened on television... which introduced me to generations past (mostly in the form of sitcoms). The books that I had access to at my home and various libraries were all old, filled with outdated information. I was intrigued by odd images- vintage visual vocabulary that did not translate due to content, design, and ageing. What interests me is largely due to the way information is presented: the great pyramids are just as captivating as dental hygiene if done correctly.

I consider the mid 90s to be the pinnacle of creative entertainment; it was the era that went, perhaps, too far. Most everything was marketed to the adolescent male- without regard for his parents. Gross-out cartoons (such as Ren and Stimpy) dominated Nickelodeon as well as MTV. Commercials made fun of adults: Bubble Tape went after the lunch lady, while Frosted Mini Wheats encouraged a rebellious attitude towards your family reunion. Toys were based on Rated-R movies and shot missiles... far! Grunge music filled the airwaves with apathetic ballads against high school, love, and your girlfriend's parents. It was a lost generation that realized the world was shit and only smiled when authority cringed at their freak-out art. Eventually, the protest expanded to include commercialization, and then it was over.

Upset parents convinced the FCC to enforce a TV rating system. MTV replaced cartoons with prime-time soaps. And politically charged music was killed by synthesized pop. The demographic became pre-teen girls, and corporations made billions overnight. The creative, angst-induced freak-out was over. But it wasn't just the death of imaginative 90s culture, but bizarrity in general. As long as there have been sitcoms, there were wacky premises: The Beverley Hillbillies, Mr. Ed, My Mother the Car, Mr. Smith (LOOK IT UP), Night Court, and so on. The networks wouldn't air a sitcom unless it focused around a non-traditional family: The Jeffersons, Diff'rent Strokes, The Golden Girls, Alf- for pete's sake! Today, TV consists of uninspired reality shows, generic cop, lawyer, and medical shows, and sitcoms featuring the formulaic bubbling dad, know-it-all mom, and their (almost invisible) 2.5 kids. The demographic shifted again to adults, particularly middle-aged women and their guilty pleasures. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible.

The early 90s were all about me- the angst-ridden boy with an affinity towards the weird, violent and grotesque. Now, society is geared towards everything I was taught to hate. My artwork is a nostalgic reflection of my childhood: a quiet riot glorifying the golden age of mass-media.

Statement

Throughout my work, I am exploring issues of dominance and the division of land and space due to class, race, politics, and conflict. In the beginning I looked at plant life, protected and preserved by humans as well as controlled and governed in order to accomplish goals determined by curators at an outdoor museum. I turned to exploring divisions and differences in neighborhoods within close proximity of one another as a way to draw attention to the physical boundaries created by money and power. Attempting to show this by bringing fragments of these places to the same level through a video grid, I was careful not to favor one over another. These spaces, which I saw as fragmented and separate, turned out to have more in common than I expected, forcing me to re-examine my intentions. Though I was continually exploring topics with two or more opposing sides, I was always careful to balance them equally as to not say anything that might be out of place. A final video in which I unapologetically label neighborhoods in Chicago through my own perception of the place and who lives there begins to conquer these issues, letting my own bias and identity show through. Moving forward, I want to know more about the shifting of populations, contestation of spaces, and the effects of power on minority populations.

statement

My objects serve as evidence of a possible life. Though now static, they serve as an indicator of growth, a preserved specimen. These pieces become relics, infused with the memory and feelings of their creation. Details and textures become an imprint of each step in their progression as forms, as bodies aware of their history and source of being. I consider them precious in their role as documents of a time and feeling, yet they also serve as parasites. This is due to their formation—physical and emotional cannibalism of the self. The value of the piece comes not only from the experience of creation, but also from the transfer of person to object. Considering my life as valuable, I attempt to transfuse that worth into a tactile, visible container through efforts resembling penance. This creation of a being endeavors reconciliation between fear and wonder, fact and feeling, distance and empathy, and intuitive action and its limitations or rules of invention. These rules allow for the works to serve as physical solutions to emotional problems and guarantee a relationship where the more I put into it the more I get out of it. Perhaps also transforming the parasitical into the symbiotic.

Juxtaposition

My work juxtaposes diverse aspects of my life. In the absence of an identity defined by a single religion, culture, place or ethnicity, I have been searching for a definition of my self. I created, “Paper Trail” an installation mapping my physical path over a year, to explore the memory of place. In the following piece, I attempted a new form of expression, or rather, combined the way I express myself playfully in hoop class with the way I express myself in my art practice. Throughout the semester I have been examining my current place through the lawn, which I see as a defining aspect of this place where I now live. I juxtapose my delightful childhood memories of the lawn, with the lawn’s current devastating environmental impact in the Chia Sandal project. The culminating project of the semester presented me with an obstruction that showed what a wide gulf still exists between who I am and what I express artistically.

Alone = All One

Humans are by nature social creatures, motivated by survival. We band together to form societies and achieve great things, but this does not prevent us from feeling alone.

Even when surrounded by our own kind, we may feel disconnected and removed from the moment at hand, like we are lost at sea with one foot on the shoreline.

In my work, I strive to find the connections between us, those that can tap into our collective strength, and free us from the isolating moments when the true meaning of humanity seems lost. I look for reminders of the fact that the ability of one human being is immense, but our combined potential is infinite.

reintroduction

In 1999 a friend’s family sold their house and moved to Cleveland. They had the biggest house, the best games, and the most junk food. They had given us full reign of the basement, which had its own entrance and opened onto a swimming pool. My friends and I literally lived in that basement and I get the feeling my mom is still secretly hurt by the amount of time I spent there. The night after they moved some friends and I snuck into the empty house with sleeping bags for one last night, stubbornly holding onto our time there. The house was completely empty. Every surface was scrubbed clean for the next family to start fresh. But as we lay there talking and laughing the empty space was filled by our conversations and memories. Through my work I have tried to do the same, to create a presence in empty space, to show traces that imply action, and make things that are felt more than seen.

A house is an enclosed space, separating inside and outside, providing shelter, comfort and storage. But my home is more ambiguous. It requires a spatial freedom, feeling needed by others, and a comfort of existing without pretense. Home is spoken of spatially but its structure is made of people, knowledge, and memory as well as space. When I move, my sense of home is damaged but not destroyed. I am still connected to distant homes through telecommunication and I can build new connections through shared language, interest and history. Geography was easy to ignore, but I think a sense of home requires the passage of time. Without my past experiences I have only the initial, static definition of a house.

I’m now questioning the role that iconography of the house will take in visualizing my sense of home, as a spatially defined identity. My other, larger challenge is to reveal more of myself in my work. I find myself circling back to the initial question: “what details of my life do I reveal?” This obstruction is the most unsettling. My work is autobiographical, but when I hear the word “confessional”, Tracy Emins tent assaults me like a nightmare! The modernist aesthetic is an attractive shield but is often just as exclusionary. How does an artist balance being revealing without sensationalizing or being presumptuous?

statement

I employ the human figure as a metaphor to probe socially related themes and try to perceive underlying connections that exist between seemingly disparate things. I have been examining hierarchies of power within social structures and how social structures are created, where they originate, and the way the social structures fluidly transition into one another as a means of sustaining themselves and expanding indefinitely. I’m interested in the way these structures fluidly transition into one another, embedding themselves in unexpected places and the various forms that they take on. My aesthetic includes collecting my own drawings and paintings done in a variety of medium on different paper surfaces, and reassembling them with texts of my own that I collage together in layers. The approach becomes an extension of the content and process becomes integral to the end in the use of a variety of surfaces that become connected through the piece, the layering suggests the constant transformation of society and constant shifts of power at every level.

in the car

It’s almost silent in the car with the windows up and the radio off. The fan is blowing, but its on low, whispering from the vents on the dashboard. There is activity on the other side of the windows, but from inside it’s like the whole world is on mute. The normal humming of the engine is amplified slightly due to lack of other noises in the cabin; it speaks up for just a second as it shifts into second gear at ten miles per hour. Then, continues humming.

Michael's Bound Boxes

Fifteen boxes are stacked haphazardly, tied together by a maze of thin rope. The boxes vary in size: 2 large, 5 medium, 8 small. The small ones can fit nothing larger than a coffee mug. They create an asymmetrical mass of squares and rectangles. On the outer edges, some boxes hover above the floor, suspended by the rope binding. Hooks rest on top of the boxes, attached to the ropes as if to be hung from the ceiling. This suspension undermines the sense of weight created by the mass of cardboard and the unknown contents of the unmarked packages.