His Story: Reconciling the Old-Young Man

Abstract

The history and mythology of the male form is a central concern to my practice. How it repeats and manifests throughout time fuels my work. Through a menagerie of plastic materials, stories and sculptural motifs, my research has parsed what I refer to as the old-young man. Strongly related to the Jungian archetype of the puer aeternus, or eternal boy, my work has been an attempt to locate my own identity in a larger continuum of figurative sculpture. Whether organizing my work with attention to material or narrative, the strategies employed in my studio relate to what I identify as two forms of time. Acknowledging linear time, I embody the shadow of the puer, the senex. Grappling with cyclical time, I assert that the structure of myth points to an eternal narrative repeated generationally. My efforts throughout my study attempt to resolve the dissonance between both. Story serves as much as a material as clay, plaster, or wax, and when utilized in the present, can condense time reaching as far back as antiquity.