About Fragment I

FRAGMENT #1 is exactly what the title says - a fragment of something else. In this case, the fragment is about 85% of the original piece; however, the idea of this ‘fragment’ as a fragment of a greater concept is perhaps more appropriate.

My hole-filled aesthetic is one I began to use in the winter of 2007 as a reaction to wind- and water-eroded stone. The idea of the perfect nature of erosion, and the relation between natural erosion and mimicked erosion, such as a machine-drilled hole, is an idea I find deeply intriguing and wonderfully contrary.

Pulling the machine-drilled hole out of the realm of the mechanical and utilitarian and placing it within the realm of art and organic simplicity has become a dear task for me.

FRAGMENT #1 was created by my drilling a few thousand holes in a fairly small, 1/2-inch thick rectangular piece of aluminum plate. I did not know what I was going to do with this piece once I was happy with the hole-density; however, once I reached that place, I found that I was only more puzzled. The presence of all of the holes transformed the aluminum in strange and wonderful ways I had not expected.

I lived with the new creation for several weeks and then cut the rectangular piece into an irregular shape roughly similar to the shape it is today. Once in this shape, I pondered the piece for several months, carrying it with me at times, often photographing it and viewing it in unique settings and environments. In the end I made a few more cuts, but left the sculpture more or less as it was, a simple fragment of something else.

The sculpture was polished and I created stainless steel support posts to hold the fragment above a thick, rectangular, clear Lucite pedestal. I like to think of the rectangle of the pedestal as a sort of spirit, or ghost, of the original shape of the sculpture.