I have always had a profound desire to be creative and to hone my skills, furthering my ability to express a creative thought. The pursuit of perfecting a repertoire of skills is a significant and driving force behind why I create. I feel that perfecting ones ability to control any given medium better equips an artist to develop a creative thought into its fullest potential. I have spent the past twelve years honing such skills in my work as the co-founder of the Milwaukee based design-build firm, Flux Design.
I founded Flux Design with my good friend and fellow Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) alumni, Jeremy Shamrowicz. Together, with the many talented people that have worked with us, we have created something I have learned a great deal from and am very proud of. In building my knowledge and experience, Flux has been the vehicle that has delivered me to were I am today. Now, with great enthusiasm and confidence, I find myself in a unique position to pursue a creative journey as an independent fine artist and sculptor. For the foreseeable future I plan to continue my involvement in mutually beneficial projects at Flux Design, I will pass on what I have learned, utilize the space I've helped to create, and enjoy the comradery of my Flux family. I'm also fully participating in the television show Made In Milwaukee, which airs on the DIY Network and follows the Flux crew as we uniquely renovate spaces in Milwaukee area homes. It's lots of fun...tune in!
I founded Flux Design with my good friend and fellow Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) alumni, Jeremy Shamrowicz. Together, with the many talented people that have worked with us, we have created something I have learned a great deal from and am very proud of. In building my knowledge and experience, Flux has been the vehicle that has delivered me to were I am today. Now, with great enthusiasm and confidence, I find myself in a unique position to pursue a creative journey as an independent fine artist and sculptor. For the foreseeable future I plan to continue my involvement in mutually beneficial projects at Flux Design, I will pass on what I have learned, utilize the space I've helped to create, and enjoy the comradery of my Flux family. I'm also fully participating in the television show Made In Milwaukee, which airs on the DIY Network and follows the Flux crew as we uniquely renovate spaces in Milwaukee area homes. It's lots of fun...tune in!
I'm currently exploring and developing a fabrication process that I believe to be uniquely my own. I apply this technique to the subject matter, which is often times the human form. The process involves cold-forging via hammer and anvil, sheet metals such as steel, stainless steel, and bronze into individual forms. These forms then become the facets that collectively give shape to a human form. Piece by piece I painstakingly template, cut, hammer-form, grind, polish, and layer the individual pieces onto the overall sculpture. The process is time consuming, difficult, and the chances of "mission creep" a constant challenge. Mission creep, if you are unfamiliar with the term, means if your a little off in the beginning, you're way off at the end. However the challenges are largely what motivate me and I find the result well worth the effort.
The artistic direction I see myself exploring and expanding upon would be the merger of this fabrication process with the human form. I've always been intrigued by the human body, its beauty, and the expressive force it contains. We as humans are unconsciously geared to understand the subtle gestures of the human body, especially the face, and we use these gestures to communicate without words. Most of us can not explain many of these subtleties but we understand them all the same. My desire is to understand and reflect these qualities through my art . This in turn is how I choose to reflect myself, for through the process of every figurative sculpture I create, the emotions are mine. The experience is like creating an emotional avatar of yourself frozen in a moment in time.
