Backbone

It is rare that a finished sculpture of mine ends up looking exactly like its original sketches. The first one I started in this new examination of mine into the history of the United States is no different.

 The sketch shown here was actually recycled from elements of other pieces I sketched earlier. Originally, I had intended to place the busts of the founding fathers of the U.S. into a frame that would visually connect them to each other. They were to be flanked by two separate compartments housing the images of several monkeys that, when driven by a hand crank, would jump up and down (hopefully giving an agitated notion.) It was difficult for me to orientate the figures so that they configured to the mechanism that I had designed to animate the piece.

 I fell into the trap of putting the cart before the horse on this one, as I did not have a sound mechanical design fully figured out before I began to compose the aesthetic elements. It went through a series of re-designs before all the pieces fell into place, but here is the latest and what is probably close to the final design.

A friend of mine, collaborator and creator of Almost Scientific told me that after a long education in neuroscience, he came to find that most of what he wanted to do with his career was not exactly science, but art. I cannot help but feel like my experience with history is similar if not as involved.

 My career in art has produced a newly found and growing curiosity in history. A short time ago, while consuming what I thought was an average amount of cooperate funded American media, I had a realization. It was not the content I was seeing that moved me so much as was the rate at which it was broadcast in my direction. My mind was boggled at how fast these media makers expected me to keep up with what they were presenting. In my confusion, the question entered my mind, “What happens to all the events that are forgotten as a result of this high speed information assault?” Where is the follow up?  Are these things not still relevant to us as we progress? After all, history is not static. Time is not isolated, but made from a connected string of events – actions and re-actions. Why do we forget about really important people and events from just a short time ago, and then wonder why our present is so strange? George Santayana’s quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” strikes me with particular relevance here.

 The first attempt I made to address this was an investigation into enigmatic and sometime lesser- known figures from US history. I thought it might be interesting to commemorate their existence in a series of sculptural portraits that did not necessarily celebrate their deeds, but simply communicated the memory of them. I think it is important to be aware of people and events that the writers of school history books quietly sweep under the rug.

 After a several months my research yielded images of Ted Kosinski, Samuel Gompers, Sitting bull, Axis Sally and many others before realizing that this idea was not strong enough for me to make a piece from it alone. Of the many portraits that I had on the wall of my studio however, the one of John Brown stood out to me.

He was a struggling businessman from Connecticut who practiced armed gorilla acts of insurrection in the name of abolitionism in the mid 1800’s. As I became more interested in him, I was simultaneous drawn to the time period in which he lived and did these things. Soon after I  realized that his actions, and the actions of others that I found fascinating, all seemed to be in response somehow to wartime events.

 It was this discovery that refined my interest in the history of our society in times of war, and shifted the direction of my work. 

  As we have moved through the history of production in Western Civilization away from the traditional methodology of apprentices and masters we have adopted an educational system that places individuals into factory and office -like settings, training them in broad terms to be workers in a much larger, more industrial and homogenized environment.

 This is not a new idea, as the beginning of the industrial revolution arguable began when the concept of piecework was first conceived. This was probably sometime in the Renaissance in small cobbler or blacksmith shops. The master craftsmen realized that more could be done if the work was broken up into smaller repetitive “production” jobs to be assembled at a later time. This was probably a result of having to supply an increasing demand associated with a growing population.

 It was not until the water powered, belt driven mills of Europe and early America in the 1700’s that this idea entered its stride and became known as the world-changing revolution that it was.

 The modern age of industry and man-less machinery and has all but phased out the traditional craft workers of the world in varying degree and almost absolutely in the United States. The demand for more products to be made at a faster pace nearly drove the old methods of production into obsolescence. Nevertheless, this brought about a strange and interesting result. The surviving trades of pre-industrial Europe and America, such as metalsmithing, have been allowed to evolve into more creative realms today. The advent of faster production, has given the practitioners of these older trades the freedom to make work that is less associated with utilitarian life and more rooted in artistic expression.

This example is particularly relevant to me, as I am an artist working primarily with metal and many traditional, pre-industrial techniques. My career has only benefited though from the demise of pre-industrial production. As the traditional definitions and roles of these crafts have withered, I have been able to pick up the remnants and reclaim them for my own creative self-expression.

The result of this historic, economic change in supply brought about by a growing social demand is just one example of how the needs of a certain time converged to produce a monumental series of events. In this case, events that have continued to influence the politics, and progression of the world and its people.

 When I think about the forces that have been created and perpetuated throughout history by the needs of an ever-growing world population, I begin to recognize patterns in society such as events leading up to wars and the relationship between world leaders and their citizens. These discoveries speak volumes to me about humanity and my own existence.

 This blog was created as an attempt to investigate other examples of these patterns, to further my understanding of this strange world and the behavior of all the people living in on it, as all of this seems to be an ever-increasing influence on my artwork.