ARTIST STATEMENT
I’ve always been interested in the contradictions of being human. That we can feel both big and small, be crushed by doubt or filled with self-confidence, act with brutal selfishness or overflowing compassion, be bursting with life and then, in the end, be very much dead.
We spend a lot of energy trying to prove to ourselves and others that we are one thing or the other, in denial about the reality that both sides of these opposites exist in every one of us. One of the things I’m trying to do as an artist is to explore our inescapable duality. It is the essence of being human and humane, and one of the things we all have in common.
I was very lucky to chance upon the idea of making miniature worlds in boxes. The combination of box + miniature seems remarkably able to hold these contradictions in an illuminating and accessible way.
Looking at the small people in Glass Cathedrals going about their brilliant, absurd lives, we feel compassion – first for them, then for ourselves, and finally for others (poor us! lucky us!). This creates a sort of secular ‘state of grace’ that allows room for curiosity and empathy. In this space, old certainties loosen their grip and contradictions become easier to accept.
When perspectives begin to shift, anything is possible.
“From tiny experiences we build cathedrals.” – Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize in Literature