Barter Faire, Closed? Painting

ARTIST STATEMENT “I’m interested in exploring my own relationship to society, culture, the past and its nostalgia, and in documenting my own interpretation of the human experience. But what even is “my” culture? What is American culture at all, really? It doesn’t appear to be real; it appears to be made up. Each day it becomes more and more difficult to navigate the world without a slave device in our pockets, keeping us glued to our screens while the mainstream media presents a simulated and flawed, binary version of our society that truly resembles a clown show. Degradation, demoralization, and fear-mongering everywhere you turn, and then they sell you fake hope in a pretty package or a catchy pharmaceutical jingle. I just simply want to make art that isn’t any of that.” ARTIST BIO I was born at home in 1981, a home which doubled as a steel rule die shop and a sign shop. This meant a creative childhood filled with machinery, wood and metal scraps, vinyl lettering stickers, drafting tools, a variety of different mediums at my disposal, and music-- lots of music. I've been a professional Steel Rule Die maker since 1997, self-employed since 2007, serving primarily the printing industry but also leather, textile, packaging, aerospace, and general manufacturing industries as well. Steel rule die making checks most of my boxes for a creative outlet but not all of them. Die making is exact and rigid, always commissioned, always with a deadline. Painting allows for its direct opposite. I build dies by day and paint by night. A yin and yang of creative intent and the bridges that connect them. My late father once told me, as I was learning to build dies amidst the struggles of being a new young father myself, "You can't let outside problems prevent you from what needs to be done, just put your head down and do the work. If you don't have work to do, go out and get some."