BIOGRAPHY
"I dropped Everything, leaving my profession in the museum field to pursue the making of monumental steel structures. Breaking from the confines of the museum, I reach the public sharing a moment of reflection, wonder, or joy amidst the chaos of the world."
TJ is a recent graduate student at Bowling Green State University he followed his desires in Sculpture. He previously received his BFA from Wright State University in 1996 and later studied Sculpture at SACI “Studio Arts Centers International” in Florence, Italy.
After returning to the states, TJ worked in museums in Ohio, New Mexico, and Alabama, in galleries, and in academia. What for him began as an avid interest was becoming a lifetime career. Though in his employment he would find himself immersed in the art world, TJ experienced a dwindling of his love of art and the passion he had long held for it. He came eventually to see that he had allowed life to get in the way. What he realized was his love for creating art that suffered. Impacting his dreams and his passion. Resurrecting the old fire he once knew, he pursued his ambition at Bowling Green State University to reawaken his love and passion to become an outdoor sculptor.
Artist Statement
Epictetus: “Man is affected, not by the events, but by the view he takes on them.”
While in the pursuit of making sculpture, I consider the theory of constraints exploring steel in the making. Like steel, I endure, for I have the power and the will to survive. No infliction shall hold me down! I feel much like a warrior on a battlefield, fighting four dimensions all at once as I follow my lifelong desires. Though others may think this foolish, this thinking is the reason I wield steel as my material of choice. It’s strength calls to me, motivates, and challenges me.
I find myself drawn to abstract expressionists and minimalism. Predominantly speaking to Clement Meadmore and Tony Smith with whom I may one day share a similar fate. Smith, a kindred spirit in a sense, shares not only a method of working but also experienced having a related blood disorder. Perhaps like Smith, the making of art will give me a sense of purpose, and I will mark my place freeing me from the madness the world imposes.
As the artist in control of the aesthetic decisions, I set out committed to an adventure, hoping to find "The Zone" where I can lose all sense of time and succumb to the "flow." Throughout the creative process, I continuously ask questions, consider the viewer, spatial relationships, and determine where both magic and mishaps happen. For it is in the fabrication of these steel constructions, I make 'real' what was once imagined.