What is What

ABOVE: temporary arrangement of found objects and fabricated elements untitled

I have fabricated several small metal characters in light metals like brass, silver and thin sheet steel over the years. I have taken these small creations and built or arranged little worlds that the characters I fabricated then exist in. I change these micro-installations... like chapters in the characters lives and over the years have developed an attachment to the characters. Each arrangement of a character in an environment is temporary and is not welded or joined in any manner only postioned. I recently came across a mini-japanese sand garden and realized that the micro-installations were my own sort of post industrial Pittsburgh sand garden. Repositioning, arranging, finding perfection, or in some cases a pleasing imperfection, was the only pursuit. In the arrangement pictured above I had recently taken out a wasps nest and had it sitting around then, in the same period, found several chunks of a broken fire hydrant. The hydrant pieces when placed in the right way formed a sort of ritualistic pointed entryway which gave the action of the woman character eating the unborn wasps that much of a creepier tone.  The arrangment might have lasted a week or so before it was dismantled. I enjoy the muse or sketch quality of this ongoing series of impermanent arrangements and their ability to strike a tone or convey emotion. In the above arrangment a rather dark tone for sure but not always.