Human history is filled with variations on a single activity: people using available resources to accomplish what they need to do, want to do, or are compelled to do. This activity continues today, the main differences being the variety of resources, and a bit more time freed up for the wants as opposed to the needs. The products of human activity are everywhere, some displayed proudly in homes, used every day, or bought and sold as commodities, others tossed in dumpsters, accumulated in sinks, or swept under shelves. All of these products, or byproducts, have the potential to tell a story about the person or culture that created them.
As an artist, I am interested in blurring the boundaries between the precious and the mundane, the known and the conjectured, the past and the present. I take the products of a past activity, and present an alternative history of how they came to be in the studio dumpster, or on the ground by a trail in the woods. I create it as convincingly as possible, not to deceive, but to challenge the viewer to at least question what they may take for granted.
Creating an object's story often involves combining ancient designs with modern motifs, but always in an attempt to expose something timeless. A contrived Greco-roman lead sling bullet inscribed with the Greek translation of “the South will rise again,” and cast from replica rifle bullets recovered from a Civil War reenactment shooting range, may not tell us anything factual about the Greeks, the American Confederates, or modern Civil War reenactors, but perhaps it can tell us something about the nature of war and animosity.
By creating artifacts we recognize and value from the past out of artifacts we discard and ignore in the present, I hope to address a wide range of issues including value cycles, the environment, consumer culture, and poverty. However, more so than any of these things, my work is simply about noticing the unremarkable.
Ret·ro·ar·chae·og·ra·phy –noun, plural -phies.
The science of creating a new past by allowing the products of an action to determine the action itself.