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Essay
Patrick Pierce October 2002
It is through working with materials that I find resolution of life�s meanings in particular moments. Though the resulting artifacts are visual objects, the forces that urge and call them into being are not strictly visual forces � lyric progressions, musical riffs, laughter and levity, the upward struggle of matter into consciousness. The physical wrestling with obdurate substance enables me to cut through the distractions of the intellect and become whole in active being.
What we seek
is beyond motive or intent
Being in action
flowering forth
all elements in play
A beckoning unfamiliar voice
Somehow recognized
and heeded.
In actual practice this synthesis requires forging many discrete elements � copper, wood, steel, canvas, plastic, oil paint, etc. � into one realization through time. A sculpture, a painting, a human object is a by-product of art, the manifest form of experience and questing spiritual consciousness living through the artist.
I have worked for years from an early insight concerning the tension between the organic flowing forms expressive of growth, life, expansion, against the geometric, analytic forms of the mind, and the unity arising from their interplay.
I use the debris of nature and industry as points of departure to achieve new markers of life awareness. The off-cut of a computer-guided cutting-torch evokes granite mountains, the radiant sky, the flower�s gesture. And the grain in paper, the weave of linen, spread a net to hold the traces of vision. The practice of art, like birdsong, is ceaseless spending and renewal; the objects of art, its visible emblems.
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Statement for PostIndustrial II exhibition
Patrick Pierce, 16 october 2002
The origin of constituent materiel is not the point. What really matters is the degree to which the imaginative, transformative powers of the artist are engaged. It could be silk thread and toothpicks as well as former cogs and I-beams. The practice of art is an inner, human response to being, by which the artist experiences most fully who he is, as a kind of supersensible photograph from another dimension. Objets d'art are by-products of this vital process. I find particular interest in the rejectamenta of an advanced, materially accomplished culture -- "by what they throw away will you know them."
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Notes for Chelsea NYC exhibition
Patrick Pierce 2003
The exhibition is [might be] called space poems because the rules by
which the sculptures are formed are as much about rhyming and rhythm,
resonance and regret as they are about visual rules and constructs.
I use natural and industrial cast-offs reworked to orchestrate/compose
constellations of interchange among multiple elements. that sounds very
abstract when in fact it's concrete experience -- the sustained
engagement in an impulse from seed to fruition.
- maps of encounters
- slow dances with materials
I am a poet/sculptor finding peace with life as it is through the practice of
art. I use natural and industrial materials to sustain engagement in life -- i
practice art, therefore I am.
The work in the show directly expresses my engagement with life. It
provides a way to be that creates meaning by constructs in time...as Blake
said, "eternity is in love with the productions of time."
This recent work stems from many years of practice and a lifetime of
attention to awareness of being.
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