Some Serious Business presents #FiftyQuestions to highlight folks who are creating, presenting, questioning and critiquing. Each featured artist picks a handful of questions to answer.
4- Describe your ideal workspace
I have my ideal workspace. The first thing that I do when I get to my studio is to burn some “Gratitude” incense on my work altar. I was fortunate enough to buy an old 3-bay mechanic’s garage in 2012. I had looked at this place in 1977 to rent. There are not a lot of industrial buildings in Santa Fe, because we never had old heavy industry, so MANY sculptors knew about this building. It’s insanely great. It was built in the early ‘70s, and it has a bunch of old-school hand-made features, like the vent-pipe made from old cars’ drive-shafts welded together.
7- What project of yours do you personally consider your most satisfying, and why – regardless of external support or accolades?
I did a show at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008 that was the culmination of 10 years of research and work about human radiation experiments that the U.S. government covertly subjected unknowing citizens to. People like, poor pregnant women, prisoners, children in a state home where disabled and “incorrigible” boys were dumped, and some doctors’ own children. The project started with some cold-war artifacts-glass negatives of tissue samples at 3 to 30 thousand times magnification. The artifacts led me to the story, and compelled me to continue so that I could tell a narrative from a perspective other than the government’s. It was dark and uncomfortable and scary, and I’m still glad that I saw it through.
11- What is you current guiding motivation to work and/or express yourself?
My current guiding motivation to work is the same as it has always been-curiosity. I always want to see if “I can DO it”, and I am always excited about what I am investigating, whether it is the physical aspects and/or techniques of working with a new material, reading about cutting- edge science and seeing where that intersects with old knowledge, learning the deep history of a story, or thinking about future histories.
13- Do you have a relationship with the distant future – in other words, are you making artwork that bears a message or impact for coming generations?
I am currently working on/thinking about Time Travel, in a few different aspects. Certainly, the classic science-fiction (of which I am a life-long fan) actual corporeal transportation of self through time, but also the more common altered states of daydreaming, nostalgia, and aspects of memory. Human’s ability to move forward and backward through time is not always a good or accurate-witness the current wave of nostalgia for how things “used to be” for white men.
15- What surprises you most about what you are doing right now in your practice? If the nine year old you could see you right now, what do you think s/he would think?
Nine is, I think, the perfect age. You have a sense of yourself and your place in the world, and teen hormones haven’t really kicked in. I think my 9-year-old self would be pretty happy. I’m doing exactly what I want, where I want, with the people I want to be doing it with, and….having fun.
28- When does Joy tend to visit you?
Joy visits me regularly in my studio. I love making things. The happy dance ensues.
