ARTIST STATEMENT

Unlike a painting or photograph that is of  something, a sculpture itself is  a thing. This is not to say that references--pieces of the world captured and distilled--do not play in important role in my art: the opposite is true. References made through materials and forms are the most basic building blocks of my work.

My art comes from the no man's land between seemingly distinct fields. This intermediate space is far larger than the pure opposites on either extreme. The gradient where one thing ends and another begins is less defined than our languages have terms for. 

I work primarily with wood. Wood is a comprehensible material to us. It is relatively soft and impressionable, easily worked by hand. Unlike the prodigious strength, hardness, and longevity of stone and various metals, wood deteriorates on a more human time-scale. It is a living material--and continues to act as one long after the tree has been cut down. Wood can bend and twist, swell and shrink, and often does so on its own accord.

Every material has its own voice, vocabulary, and set of connotations that dictate what a sculpture says. Materials can interact with each other, creating new materials with new textures, appearances, and behaviors that can further create new languages of expression.

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Photography by Finn Bjornerud