|
|
|
J. Doug Patterson I find my way in art by relying heavily on the materials I work with. The touch, the feel of materials, the most elemental part of sculpting, is where I begin. I try to surround myself whenever possible with all manner of materials, whether it be bits of brick and fabric or old scraps of wood and sheet metal. Currently I am finding my inspiration in aged steel and the fabrication processes used to manipulate that material. In my steel works I am looking not for imitation but for a reminder of something basic. Something referencing a present day individual's first memories of interacting with shape, form, construction, and creation. In my works I don't want to see bolts, or welds, or even file marks on the steel as such mundane practicalities ruin the nostalgia and the sense of basic form and easy construction. |
||||||||||
|
If you go to a local toy store
and find the most basic set of building blocks, particularly
wooden building blocks, eight out of ten times you will find
shapes and proportions that are almost identical to each other and easily recognizable by a majority. A popular colloquialism for an impossible task says that something "is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole." One of the most common toys you'll find around pre-schoolers is one that teaches spatial relationships and hand-eye coordination by asking a child to fit the shaped block in the equally shaped hole. As we age our understanding of forms and our desire to create becomes more personal and more complicated. We discover ever more complex units with which to fill our world, whether they are Tinker Toys or Legos. As adults we may only concentrate on a basically shaped object when it somehow challenges those engrained notions of shape and construction; a clever bit of craftsmanship or a challenging puzzle like the Rubik's cube. We have a basic urge, the curiosity, to touch them, move them around, take them apart, put them together, and make our own experience with shape. I find one of the strongest urges is that which completes the "unfinished" form. If you came across a one thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with all but three pieces assembled what do you think you would do? |
|||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||