This installation was part of the 2014 Whitworth Faculty show at the Bryan Oliver Gallery in Spokane, Wa.
Artist Statement
Contemporary American culture instills an empty masculine identity within men and women. At a very young age, contemporary American culture challenges us to use our communities and environment for our own means without recognizing the damage we instill on the people around us and the earth we live in. We are told to go to school, get a job, buy a house, marry and have children. These are noble endeavors, but they do not leave room for the expressive, spontaneous nature found in a healthy masculine identity.
Modern masculinity seeks to isolate the masculine from the feminine and justifies it's actions through “macho” behavior. As youths we are given iron tools in the forms of knowledge and developed physicality. These tools should be used to cultivate and protect the earth and people around us, but instead we are taught that these tools are weapons of oppression and dominance to drive us away from the ground and our feminine counterpart. Apart from the feminine, the masculine seeks to control and dominate through force of will. By seeking a connection with the earth and the communities around it, the masculine can start to shed the sexist machoism constructed by contemporary culture.
In this work, I regard the transition out of contemporary masculinity. These figures are making a movement out of institutionalized structures towards a connection and oneness with the earth.
