About Me
I'm An autodidactic research artist developing a unique artistic medium based on the Lichtenberg Figures phenomena - fractal dielectric breaking of materials in high voltage current. In my work I turns electric resistance into a brush and create a complex dialogue between the raw forces of nature and the human capacity to instill intention and meaning, a perception formed along a decade of experimentation and inspired by my wide (if not necessarily deep) knowledge of science, and my experience in dog training and preschool education - to form a framework of boundaries allowing freedom within. The method's evolution focuses on the interactions between control and submission, wherein from year to year, I move from enforcing my will onto the material and forces into listening to them, thus tempting them into forging images, textures and shapes involving scientific, natural and narrative contents, from the resolution of the sub atomic to the cognitive, using scavenged materials, while evolving the technique to a rich, high contrast and vibrant visual language.
 House hunting |
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 With family |
 At Work |
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When I began overcoming my childhood fear of crafting, I found a piece of self buried for so long that it fountained out as if from a bursting dam. Since then, I've learned leathercraft, woodworking, metal etching and many other crafts, but I found my main niche in creating Lichtenberg figures. It was lust at first sight. When I first saw the fractals grow like living lightning, I had two thoughts. Both as a science and nature enthusiast as well as a semi-functioning control freak, seeing the complexity that emerged from nature's most simple laws, life-like in front of my very eyes was utterly humbling . So, the second thought... how could I control it?
Since then it's been a scientific, spiritual and actual journey. A journey in which the hardest part was not to learn to control, nor to learn to let go, but rather to find out where I should direct and where I should let myself be directed. Most of those learnings came to me on the road in Africa, where I bartered my works for lodging, developing my craft with a bare minimum of tools.
But these learnings lean heavily on wisdom imparted to me by previous masters of their respective crafts, like my dog training teachers and all who taught me to be a kindergarten teacher. What I learned - and am still learning - is gradually taking shape along the lines of 'You deserve a position of leadership only when it is offered up to you, as a function of how well you understand who, or what, is under your wing, to it's betterment, without unnecessary enforcement'. I am learning that this applies to energy and electricity as well.
Still working on actually walking the walk, though...