I spent a large portion of my college years fabricating larger totemic sculpture made of wood and steel. Towards the end my years in college I began to realize that in an odd way I was building parts and then assembling them. Why not take these pieces apart and reassembly dissimilar parts? So I began experimenting with that idea and discovered very quickly that it was liberating in many ways to interchange and play with these pieces I had almost made sacred in some way. It was playing with one of these assemblages that I began toying with the idea of making some of these new compositions balance.
The first few were timid and somewhat bland but an old ladder in the basement sparked a fire that still burns in me today. I worked with this ladder that was cut in half and missing several rungs for quite some time until I realized that I could probably rearrange it and make it balance. After much finagling I got this ladder to interlock and balance and had finally realized my vision. This piece had a simplicity of esthetic combined with an implied sense of movement (falling down) that really struck a cord with me.
Ever since that ladder I have been making sculptures that balance by combining old wooden beams and random steel pipes and parts. Some pieces come together almost as if they were three dimensional sketches while others haunt and pester me like a needy child. In the end I strive to make each new sculpture I produce a stoic statement of my own personal esthetic with an implied energy that I hope entertains and engages.
And yes they do fall down and that is half the fun.