Artist's Statement

I grew up a few miles from Hunts Point in the South Bronx, a national symbol of urban blight at the time. I traveled through the area almost every day, although I never participated in or personally experienced the street violence that, according to the Kerner Commission Report, made the odds of dying a natural death in that neighborhood four to one against. It was impossible not to be aware of, and possibly a bit entranced by, the fact that just being in a particular place could present such a risk.

There is a relationship with violence that exists in the assemblage sculpture I produce today. The found materials I use in my work are given form as the result of violent, unplanned events, accidents occuring outside the scope of esthetic or architectonic concerns.

As evidenced in films such as Psycho and Friday the 13th, the vicarious experience of violence- the suspense and anticipation of it, as well as its memory- creates an intensity I find elegant when translated to the sculptural medium. The result is a type of "action sculpture" that follows in the tradition of an earlier generation of American artists who worked in the same sphere, if not the same medium. My sculpture continues the lineage yet differs in my refusal to paint or reshape the fragments I work with - instead, I join the found parts to create a new whole.

The photographs are different, yet the same in a way. These are views taken along the property lines between neighboring houses, always at nintey degrees to the subject. I'm interested in discovering a new space that only exists as the result of the rigid and abrupt cropping taking place here.