See, building my sculptural work is really like building a playground for my mind. I always see it as if I'm a little person, walking around down there in those spaces (as if I were walking through a canyon or something). For a few pieces I did in college I was actually trying to mimic actual land formations:
(Hope that looks like a canyon to you.)
Others are less obvious, but still those are the sort of spaces I had in mind.
This came out of a trip I took long ago with my family to the Southwest. We saw Arches National Park, the Grand Canyon, and so on. It took several years to incubate and come out in actual work.
Then in college I took a trip with the Geology Club to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. I'd never been in a cave before. Man, was that a trip! I knew that I'd found new inspiration, but I still don't really know exactly how it's going to come out in my work. For the last piece I did (seen a few posts ago), I DID have in mind cave interiors (deep shafts and things like that).
It's hard to photograph caves because they're so dark and vast and flash only goes so far, but here are a few shapes I think are really amazing. I mean it's just awesome to think about this rock being carved over years and years by water:
Howe Caverns, New York
Floyd Collins' Crystal Cave (inside Mammoth Cave National Park), Kentucky
(This cave is actually closed to the public. It once housed the remains of Floyd Collins, caving legend, and was open for tours. But now it's only opened to special cave people. My group was incredibly fortunate to be allowed in.)
Howe Caverns, New York
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