Rest

Rest

The Story Behind the Sculpture

If you follow me on social media or have met me at a convention, you’ve probably seen Rest.

With its sweeping horns and intent stare, it tends to get a few double-takes.

Rest is one of three sculptures I sculpted in a series entitled “Infringing Fantasies” during my senior year at UC Santa Cruz.

Sent out to develop my own small body of work as a senior project, I created a series that spoke to my experiences of bringing my love of fantasy into the context of a university art program.

I’ve made several sculptures since I gave form to this odd, goggled being in 2013, but I’ve kept this creature as a kind of mascot for my work since I began dipping my toe into the world of professional ceramics. 

This piece may be several years old, it remains integral to how I present myself online and in person because of the role it played in how I began to define my art and its place in the world. 

I’ll let my past self describe Rest and the “Infringing Fantasies” series in more detail.

Below is a copy of the speech I gave to my classmates and professors during my project presentation:

“I’ve always been drawn to fantastical creatures, and essentially all my life they’ve played a role in my art practice.

This series of work, entitled ‘Infringing Fantasies’, comes from that long-standing interest in the fantastic and my personal experience with how art focusing on that subject seems to be received in an ‘Art World’ context. 

When I entered the university system, I personally found that dialogue around art that focuses on fantastic creatures tends to be disparaging.

While there were exceptions to those observations, it seemed that ‘just fantasy art’ was the term for the kind of art I was interested in making.

As my education continued, I came to learn about the world of character design [and concept art], in which artists use their skills to design characters -- human or otherwise -- to be placed in movies and in video games.

I was intrigued that the ability to invent and create fantastic characters was so valued in that industrial context, yet seemed to be — at least in my experience — brushed aside in a more ‘capital A’ Art world.

So, ‘Infringing Fantasies’ attempts to visually combine the Art world with the world of character design.

In working towards this goal, I am to invent fantastic creatures that reference what’s circulating in the modern world of character design (for instance, what you might see in popular films and video games) and render them with the elements of the visual language of Greco-Roman figurative sculpture -- an appropriately ‘capital A’ Art world subject.”

By blending these two seemingly polarized worlds, I want to ask, ‘Why does that perceived polarity exist? Was there a specific moment when a bifurcation occurred? What cultural rules reinforce this dichotomy?

And most importantly, what could the Art world gain if there was a little more room for artists to make ‘just fantasy art’?”