INSECTICIDE AN ART EXHIBITION May 15 thru June 22, 2010

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a story teller. As a performer I told other peoples stories. As an artist I am free to tell my own. I have been working on the same stories for 3 decades. I develop stories slowly, as new ideas, information and possibilities reveal themselves. I didn’t have a context for these stories until 2004, when I began my faux archeological excavation: DIG: An Imagined Archeo-logism. This project gave me the platform to create an ongoing investigation of the effects of story and propaganda, and how they are manifested today. I am developing this project to expand indefinitely, both through my ideas and the ideas of others. I work in clay for two reasons 1) I love the feel of it. 2) carbon 14 dating; because clay includes once living plant matter as part of its ingredients, clay  is one of the ways excavated artifacts and cultures are dated.

I work with two mythical archetypes, Medusa (female) and Daedalus (male). In my lifetime I have gossiped, made shit up and believed stories with no validity whatsoever. I had to travel to other countries to arrive at a clearer perspective of my own country. My art is fueled by story, gossip, propaganda and myth, how these stories originate and then become accepted as gospel – especially stories about women and heroes. Los Angeles and Washington D.C. are perfect locations for that exploration where so much of the myth that fuels American “values” is created. DIG invites the viewer to begin to question, and talk about myth and story, life and death, and the joy and the allure of the absurd.

Art is an entrance into the adventure of independent thinking and creativity. One does not need to be an artist for their vision, judgment, and ability to think, to be expanded by such an experience. It is my hope to introduce all who see and participate in this project, DIG: An Imagined Archeo-logism in any of its incarnations, to the artist within themselves.

BIO

I was born in Honolulu Hawaii. My first language was Japanese. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I was evacuated to the east coast with my mother and brother, where I attended grammar school in Manhattan. After high school in Carmel, California, I studied art and philosophy at Pomona College. At the end of two years, having taken all the applied art courses possible, I transferred to The San Francisco Art Institute. I left SFAI to learn French as an au pair in Paris.

I have been an artist since 1963. In 1968 I became a performer in John Vaccaro’s company, The Play House of the Ridiculous, in New York City. Acting became an adjunct to my work as an artist. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1973 my first work as an actor was with Robert Altman. Both Vaccaro and Altman are master story tellers. Both taught me there is no wrong way to tell a story, be it acting or sculpting. Commit absolutely, go where it leads and the unworkable will be forced out one way or another. Until 1999 I continued to tell stories both as an actor and as an artist.

In 1988 my brother “Chewie” was diagnosed with AIDS. He was living in Phoenix, Arizona and, every two weeks, I would travel between LA and Phoenix to visit him. Because my brother loved the ocean, it always mystified him that he had somehow ended up in Arizona, but the vastness of space is very similar. We took road trips north through the state to the Four Corners, Canyon de Chelley, Second Mesa, and the Rim of The Superstitions. The Arizona land changes radically from mile to mile and has inspired the landscape construct of my sculptures. My brother died in 1992. It was he who suggested that my work could be objects found in archeological digs.  Skulls and bones and hearts are the building blocks and evidence of cultures past and present.