restraint.

Particular restraints or parameters create systems of building that shape the outcome of my projects. These restraints or parameters take the form of material, context, economy and my biographical, intellectual and physical attributes. As a maker, the more restrictions I put on something, the tighter the focus becomes around the subject. Also, physical, emotional and intellectual parameters or restraints become a practice in shaping, exposing and removing identity. The choice of materials, execution of process (repetition), and context (modular) is designed to restrain the individual touch. My activities are constructed to curb my personality in order to retain or maintain a focus on the activity placed on the material. I am not suggesting this is denying my presence in the production and handling of my work. My biography is an inevitable part of the array of elements that compose my works; biography is utilized as a point of identification and a means to deconstruct the production of sculpture.

Time and repetition are consciously recognized as parameters in the milieu of elements that make up a method for sculpture. As I work through problems I encounter in fabricating my work, I discover that the systems that I use for building morph; in time, the processes I utilize become streamlined. This is a necessary response to the limitations of the body in relation to time and energy expenditure. Morphing of process into efficiency becomes more unconscious due to the routine and habits that are formed in relation to the process, materials and time. The end goal, the desire, is decentralized. The goal becomes the development of a symbiotic relationship to the phenomenological processes of the experience. Living with the work becomes part of my being, an extension of self in relation to the world.

Interestingly enough, an attachment/detachment occurs with the work, identity fluxing in and out of focus and importance. So, in the end or during a viewing of these works, one not only reads the work formally, but also in relation to behavioural space. In the celebration of phenomenology I am part of the work, perhaps even more so because of the effort to restrain individuality from the work.

I deliberately put the body/mind through a restriction or task. It is a means to find the limitations of my abilities and to develop my capabilities. To initiate a task is to set up a situation to be completed in order to reveal creativity. I am not interested in creating a situation to test my aptitude or capacities. The situation originates from, in part, the physical relationship to the material by virtue of my body’s capabilities in material space. How much can I lift, afford, store, etc. are determinants. The restrictions or the limitations presented between the body/mind and the materials then introduced to the context are the components of the resistance. I am suggesting the materials determine the task’s parameters and activity. An example is Mark, a drawing fabricated by a system of repetition using paper and graphite. The formation of the work is dependent on the paper’s size, its relationship to the qualities of the graphite stick, and my endurance. My work gives me particular material to be in relation to; this dynamic defines the parameters of my body/mind that in turn expands my capacities.