Painting

Sculpture

About

Painting

Sculpture

About

AI - This is my work. What does it mean to you?

What this piece says to me is a layered meditation on civilization, consumption, and material legacy. It reads like an archaeological cross-section of culture — a column, but not of marble or stone — instead, of human habit and residue.
Layer by Layer Reflection:
  1. The Base: "Wild" Corn (Zea mays)
    This speaks to origin, cultivation, and survival — corn as one of the earliest cultivated crops in the Americas, a life-giving plant, bound to indigenous history and the domestication of the wild. It feels like the foundation of civilization itself — nourishment, land, nature before industry.
  2. Next: Pepsi Cans (4 layers, logos partly removed)
    Here, the base of life and culture gives way to the residue of modern commerce — mass production, global brands, and the flattening of regional difference into global sameness. The scratched-off logos suggest decay, or forgetting — these are not shiny Pepsi cans from a store shelf; they are aged, used, marked by time — like archaeological artifacts or ruins of consumer culture. The fact that there are four full layers of this suggests overwhelming abundance or excess.
  3. Newspaper Layer (1985)
    A literal layer of "news" — information, communication, temporality — the record of what mattered that year, already becoming history. Ephemeral in nature but preserved in cement — a contradiction — the fleeting caught in permanence. This compresses media culture into a geological stratum.
What this piece says to me is a layered meditation on civilization, consumption, and material legacy. It reads like an archaeological cross-section of culture — a column, but not of marble or stone — instead, of human habit and residue.
Layer by Layer Reflection:
  1. The Base: "Wild" Corn (Zea mays)
    This speaks to origin, cultivation, and survival — corn as one of the earliest cultivated crops in the Americas, a life-giving plant, bound to indigenous history and the domestication of the wild. It feels like the foundation of civilization itself — nourishment, land, nature before industry.
  1. Sticks Layer
    Primitive, natural, rural — like the corn below — but now above the processed, branded world and the record of information. This might suggest a return to nature — or that nature will outlast culture and commerce. The sticks seem protective, or like a barrier, separating the upper world from what lies beneath.
  2. Top: Cement Slabs
    Weight, finality, silence. Like a gravestone or architectural cap. It "seals" the work. The slab is the "modern monument" — bland, blank, industrial — capping all the layers of life, consumption, history, nature.


Overall Meaning (to me):
This sculpture could be read as a column of civilization — a silent ruin of postmodern life. The essential (corn) is crushed under the excessive (Pepsi), the record (newspaper), the organic (sticks), and the industrial finality (cement). It suggests a cycle: nature ➔ culture ➔ information ➔ nature ➔ death/monument. But the irony is sharp: what should support life is buried under what exhausts it.
It feels like both an homage and a warning. A monument not to greatness, but to waste, loss, overbuilding, forgetting. It could sit in a post-apocalyptic museum of human history.
Emotional Response:
There's humor (Pepsi cans as pillars!) but also melancholy. It’s like seeing the cross-section of a fallen building after an earthquake — exposing what mattered (and what didn’t) to a vanished culture.
I find it hauntingly beautiful. Like an accidental time capsule — made on purpose.
But now I must ask:
What did you intend? How far off or close am I to your thoughts in 1985?

  1. Next: Pepsi Cans (4 layers, logos partly removed)
    Here, the base of life and culture gives way to the residue of modern commerce — mass production, global brands, and the flattening of regional difference into global sameness. The scratched-off logos suggest decay, or forgetting — these are not shiny Pepsi cans from a store shelf; they are aged, used, marked by time — like archaeological artifacts or ruins of consumer culture. The fact that there are four full layers of this suggests overwhelming abundance or excess.
  2. Newspaper Layer (1985)
    A literal layer of "news" — information, communication, temporality — the record of what mattered that year, already becoming history. Ephemeral in nature but preserved in cement — a contradiction — the fleeting caught in permanence. This compresses media culture into a geological stratum.
  3. Sticks Layer
    Primitive, natural, rural — like the corn below — but now above the processed, branded world and the record of information. This might suggest a return to nature — or that nature will outlast culture and commerce. The sticks seem protective, or like a barrier, separating the upper world from what lies beneath.
  4. Top: Cement Slabs
    Weight, finality, silence. Like a gravestone or architectural cap. It "seals" the work. The slab is the "modern monument" — bland, blank, industrial — capping all the layers of life, consumption, history, nature.


Overall Meaning (to me):
This sculpture could be read as a column of civilization — a silent ruin of postmodern life. The essential (corn) is crushed under the excessive (Pepsi), the record (newspaper), the organic (sticks), and the industrial finality (cement). It suggests a cycle: nature ➔ culture ➔ information ➔ nature ➔ death/monument. But the irony is sharp: what should support life is buried under what exhausts it.
It feels like both an homage and a warning. A monument not to greatness, but to waste, loss, overbuilding, forgetting. It could sit in a post-apocalyptic museum of human history.
Emotional Response:
There's humor (Pepsi cans as pillars!) but also melancholy. It’s like seeing the cross-section of a fallen building after an earthquake — exposing what mattered (and what didn’t) to a vanished culture.
I find it hauntingly beautiful. Like an accidental time capsule — made on purpose.
But now I must ask:
What did you intend? How far off or close am I to your thoughts in 1985?

I call it "One and Many". The "one" in reference to the whole of the structure - unified by body proportions or the harmony of the golden rule. The "many" referring to the multiples within. I was attracted to both the multiple, density and the beauty of the Zea mays, with its natural harmonies. This is the joy in the work. The Pepsi cans, a commodity, are disarmed by the wiping off of the logos in parts. The newspaper, another commodity, its messages hidden, also disarmed and stacked into layers. The top layer, the sticks, are density, a forest or a crowd. The top 3 layers only complete the harmony, (one or two felt inadequate, three felt right - the proportions of the human body). This is a portrait of the individual. And the overall density of the work reflects its affect on the individual. A relentless battle against those forces to control through advertising.

Interpretation: "One and Many"

At its heart, this sculpture is a portrait of the individual human — not a likeness, but a structural, material metaphor for the condition of being a person in late modern society.

The “One” is the whole — the unified form, complete and standing, measured by the Golden Rule (that quiet ideal of perfect proportion). It is a body, a self, a singular being trying to remain whole.

The “Many” are the parts within — countless, dense, layered — pressing, shaping, threatening to overwhelm. A collection of forces and presences: nature, commerce, media, people.

  • Zea mays (corn) — beautiful, natural, life-giving. The joy of the organic. The base from which all human life rises.
    This is where we come from: food, seed, earth, origin.

  • Pepsi cans (commodity disarmed) — mass production, branding, global capitalism — but here, scraped, worn, muted — the identity of the brand partially erased — no longer screaming its message.
    These are the relentless signals of modern life — partially silenced but not gone.

  • Newspaper (commodity disarmed) — information, noise, distraction — flattened, hidden, robbed of immediacy.
    Once urgent, now just layered pulp, forgotten dates and crises — the fleeting "news" turned into quiet structure.

  • Sticks (density, forest, crowd, people) — humanity itself — thick, gathered, possibly watching or pressing — the crowd as pressure, or nature reclaiming.
    Above commerce and media, there are the many of us — individuals becoming mass — the topmost weight the individual must bear.

  • Cement slabs (top & bottom) — heaviness, monumentality, inescapable gravity. The world presses down. But also: protection, closure, completeness. The "frame" of being.

You describe this as a "portrait of the individual" — and that is powerful. The self as something constructed, layered, besieged — by advertising, by culture, by history — yet standing, proportioned, complete.

Even as the layers battle for control, there is harmony — hard-won, but real. The proportions you mention — three layers for the body’s order (head, torso, legs) — make the column a human stand-in. The "battle" is not for destruction, but for balance.

And this last thought of yours:

"...a relentless battle against those forces to control through advertising."

— sharpens the work’s edge. The piece is not neutral; it knows the violence of modern media and commerce. The Pepsi and paper try to colonize the self — but here they are reduced, folded, disarmed, forced into service for your proportion, your unity.

In sum:

For me, this work is about:

  • The dignity of the individual amid mass culture.

  • The struggle for inner harmony under outer pressure.

  • A quiet, victorious act of transformation — taking the "many" and turning it into the "one" through art, balance, and thought.

It is not despairing — but aware, strong, resolved.