I have spent my life investigating those parts of the world that are subtle or invisible to the popular senses of our body. This may have begun through my introduction to dowsing, an ancient art by which underground water, magnetic lines, and other phenomenon can be detected. This practice is representative of my approach to Art, for it is a simple experience, able to be realized by any person. I have a love for wisdom that comes by the direct experience of nature, or through a one-on-one relationship with another human. I feel it is through these experiences that all true knowledge of the universe is learned, and all wisdom is developed. Making art in traditional mediums I favor the use of glass, but prefer to explore what it means to sculpt potentially new media, such as gravity, quantum fields, and cosmological geometry.
A search for new ways of sensing and understanding this world started in my youth, as I explored the 50 acres of forest in which I grew up. This gave me an innate sense of the world through an ecosystem little disturbed by poor urban design. As my mind filled with unmediated experience I learned as much as I could about religious, spiritual and mystical practices. Such experiences always seem to fall outside of formal or popular frameworks of understanding, and to me are the manifestations of a human's meeting with a facet of life yet unrealized by his or her peers. It is these anomalous sources that are the well-spring of my creativity.
In high school my exploration continued as I gained a mentor, in an art teacher who began instructing me in 2nd grade. He would, throughout the years, be pivotal in my growth. At this time, I was also exposed to the Macintosh computer, with this I found a tool to reflect my mind and further my development. Computer use came as naturally to me as art making, and I explored all manner of rendition that could be done with that tool, including video, page layout, image manipulation, optical art, programming, 3D modeling & animation. I also began developing a system that I would later learn is known as a Relational Database - the foundation of information organization in our modern society. This system was developed in an attempt to organize and create a cosmology for all the information, mystical and mundane, which I was accumulating.
I entered Carnegie Mellon University doing computer art and found a shift in my work that led me to refocus on the rendering of the subtle. My study reached a critical fusion in my sophomore year. In this transformation I found mentorship, and my work took a clear step in the direction it is today. In my thesis, I sought to render a synthesis of environmental bio-electrics (orgone), bio-electrographic (Kirlian) photography, sonoluminescence (the creation of light from sound, water and air) and the vortex [water] dynamics of patterns in nature - doing so through a nearly obsessive refinement of my documentation. I have found this refinement is in itself a process for making art.
After graduation I hosted conscious community gatherings and presented my ongoing work in sponsored public forums, academic conferences and governmental inquiry sessions. I also encountered others who became mentors in that period, and by their insights have begun to express myself in a professional manner. My study spans the breadth of human knowledge, and I have found value in ancient systems for the human mind to grasp the vast phenomenon of the universe. It was in this area of development that I began my exploration of Shamanism, and the holistic healing principles of indigenous wisdom. I have woven these principles into the foundation of my practice, as I believe well-conceived work has a timeless quality.
It is my feeling that the methods ancient people used for the conveyance of [what is today known as] systems information, or systems theories, is still relevant in the development of our modern understandings of the world. I believe that as our knowledge grows and information becomes more dense we, as a culture, must have a method of allowing this accumulated information to compress smoothly into seeds of wisdom. Since these kernels are accessible to the mind at any age they can be used to teach children varied concepts in an inter-disciplinary manner, and provide a more stable foundation for growth and the development of advanced knowledge.
I have sought to understand a synthesized learning and expression process through the development of collaborative systems, which aid in research and education. I see the uniting of disparate systems of knowledge, indigenous and modern, as a way to arrive at wisdom that is the root of the human experience. In the exploration of this idea, I use my art as a way of rendering diverse areas of inquiry as a singular synaesthetic expression. These expressions form the basis for a new set of discursive tools that facilitates novel inquiry in a broad range of fields – an exercise that I believe will uncover areas of inquiry vital to the growth of our lives.
I am interested in meeting strong beings. They are the clearest of the humans - they know themselves and are unable to be anything ambivalent. They can be known because of their strength.
I am interested in finding those whose strength is in vision. Whose dreams are collisions of the great symbols of life. Who live by the call of holi forces and find else unpalatable dross - those whom wield a midas mind that imbues golden character to all who are seen.
© New Alexandria 2002-ish