This body of work continues my inquiry between the natural world and the digitally fabricated world. The residue of my digital processes are employed as vocabulary to start a new conversation and a new experience. The experiences created are highly abstracted; they are familiar but also apart from anything that we could have ever actually known—something on the tip of the tongue, something known, but also something inexplicable. Through this new vocabulary and experiences I strive to engage the viewer into an active state of exploration and wonderment.
Portals, blackholes, everything and nothing, paradox and infinite possibilities. This work explores moments of being and not being, as the viewer moves and looks around at the work. From one angle the bird is clearly seen, but as the viewer walks across and to the center of the bird the bird nearly disappears into its own reflection. The concave mirror when viewed head-on reflects the entirety of the bird and generates a solid black field. This work is made of handblown and silvered glass with a digitally designed and 3D printed bird.
All of my work considers how we see and perceive and how perception changes relations and imparts meaning. Mt. Olympus, Greece is an actual place, but it also features in a well-known myth. The highest peak of Mt Olympus is known as Mytikas (the nose), the home of the Greek gods. The casting of Mt. Olympus lies largely within a hand blown form, but a part of it has broken beyond its containment. As the viewer approaches the mountain form they are confronted with their own reflection in the upper portion of the blown form. In order to get a closer look the viewer must look into one of two eyepieces. When the viewer looks into the eyepiece the view is greatly magnified, and they are transported to “Mytikas”with all of the lines and ridges made though the digital CAD/CAM processes clearly visible on the surface. I hope to generate some play within a contradiction within another contradiction. Contemplating the original mountain and its grandness in relation to the relative diminutive scale of this facsimile, gaining a sense of grandness only after viewing the mountain through the eyepiece.. These real and perceived shifts in scale create a tugging on the mind.
The bodies of the birds are 3D printed in a transparent material allowing the viewer to see the internal honeycomb structure. The honeycomb structure serves a number of functions. It is a typical infill pattern for 3D printing, though it is typically not seen. These honeycomb patterns were created as a specific design with each bird. The pattern represents a residue of 3D printing. It also alludes to its obvious namesake the honeycomb from the beehive. Placing the honeycomb inside of the bird creates an abnormal or other worldly association. Bird and honeycomb go together in nature, yet together in this way is unnatural. The honeycomb also exits the birds body and acts as a grounding mechanism, like “feet” attaching the bird to the branch and the the wall. The tips of the branches are made from the same red glass that is used to form the beaks. This tactic creates a type of harmony or synergy between the branches and the birds that is atypical in the natural world. The branches are handblown and silvered glass. The branches are connected to digitally designed and CNC’ed marble wall mounts.
The main feature of this work is a hot glass casting of Mt. Kailash, which is a part of the Tibetan Himalayan mountain range. Many religions revere this mountain. For the Buddhist, Mt. Kailash is considered the navel of the Universe, a theme that I have used in other works. This glass casting is inverted and suspended from the handblown sphere above a black reflective pool. When the viewer peers over the work, they can see the reflection of the mountain below. This work takes as inspiration the idea of cresting over a hill and discovering a new horizon. When the viewer arrives above the work, they enter the reflection of the mountain, and the reflection appears more substantial than the actual physical object. Reflections historically have the ability to reveal the soul of a persons or their true nature and are considered portals to other realms.
