“The responsibility of a writer (or artist) is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.”
-James Baldwin
Artist statement
Every piece I create, from the humblest tumbler to the most baroque sculpture, makes a statement about isolation, striving, access, perseverance, boundary pushing, and the pursuit of excellence. As a furnace glassblower, were I to only make vessels I would, without hesitation, call the product of my labor both Craft and Art. I see my labor at the furnace, regardless of the object I am making, as inseparable from my art practice. I believe my identity as a working class black man, operating in a field reserved largely as a puerile pursuit for society's most privileged (whitest), is a powerful artistic and political gesture. Furthermore, my drive to deeply understand the material and processes of my craft coupled with the passion that I have for teaching, in a social landscape where I have not been invited, welcomed or often seen myself reflected, is an act of resistance. I am carving out space for myself. I am claiming territory and opening doors for those coming after me.
The topics I address in my work range from identity politics to the ecstatic joy of deep craft. Sometimes my work is about creating a narrative that conveys my lived experience of existing in a still unequal nation. At other times my work is about using my chosen medium to explore the potentiality of the material itself and my own growing, but incomplete, understanding of it.
I’ll often produce dozens of the same object in a quest to understand a specific technique. There is always room for improvement. My work is rooted in aspiration, obsession, curiosity, and an uncompromising commitment to my craft. I want to know what the extent of my potential is.
When I speak of my practice, I am referring not only to the way I exist in the world as an artist or the act of building skill through study and repetition, but also my personal commitment to curating the culture of the spaces I occupy by asking questions like “who hasn’t been invited to the party”, then going out of my way to extend an invitation.