HOLDING PATTERN

Barrister's Gallery | New Orleans, LA
2015

This art exhibition explores the tension and anxiety of time and term and its holding pattern. It implies play between a stifling still place and a place from which to reach out and push against limitations. The initial sentiment is one of being stuck in a situation helplessly. The theme behind Holding Pattern is the transformation from a trap to an opportunity.

This show reflects two years of thoughts and my development as an artist and blacksmith. There are deeply personal ramifications represented within this body of sculpture. My work is inspired by my dreams, my life, and my process of making. As my process evolves while building the work, it affects my life and dreams. The whole pattern is one that I hold close and repeat and ritualize. I hold something, or someone, or some idea closely and cycle it through my mind’s eye, building a pattern from the cycle, creating a word - so tangible - I build a sentence with it, in the form of a sculpture. The work expresses some of my deeply held emotions, sorrows, and ideas of social justice. It pushes the limits of expectations at all times.

Forging is an inherently transformative process. A worm, for example, is in a holding pattern. It builds the cocoon around itself. There is a mile of silk in each cocoon. And the moth; transformed, emerges, and flies away.