12.23 Studios

A real world portfolio is a targeted collection of work selected for different venues (an 8.5 x 11 case suits me just fine), but an online showcase has no such restriction. This section will hold the pieces I personally like and/or think there's an audience for...

This page also contains my Artist Statement and CV/Resume below the images.

Standing Wave
Red Wonderstone
2014

Image from the "Hatch" exhibition. That's Francis Chung hanging out with James the gallery staffer.

Not A Game
Air Dry Clay, Copper, Acrylic
2015

Little Big Sur
Alabaster
2021

A contemplation of Big Sur, a meditation of stone and water frozen in time...

Artist Statement and Resume

(also available as a pdf)

My creative path has taken many turns over the past 40 years; exploring forms and perceptions through three dimensions is only the latest twist. I use sculpture and lost wax casting to investigate the collective cultural archetypes contained within abstract forms and our relationships to those concepts and symbols. I recognized this correlation in earlier studies in drawing and illustration, which informs my efforts to bring two dimensional designs to full flower.

Throughout history, humans have employed the truly old school art of sculpture to convey, share and preserve their ideals, to reflect themselves, to reach beyond their own time to the future, shouting 'we were here!' The many ways we concentrate information down to symbols and objects (and conversly, conflate whole mythologies around an object) is fascinating.

My work with bronze and silver castings begin with ADC (Air Dry Clay), a thoroughly contemporary medium whose versatility ably captures my interpretations toward pushing the envelope. When I'm carving stone, however, I try to seek some measure of resonance with that deep well of creativity embodied by those ancient carvers and mounment builders from histories remembered and forgotten. My abstract design ideas reach back to my high school art major days. Through a blending of timeless methods and old school/new century perspective, I hope to plant my flag in the fertile ground of Afrofuturism as a 21st century artist.

My current body of work in stone delves into pure abstract expression, while my castings of sculptural jewelry and 'masks, totems and icons' explores the questions and stories sometimes evoked by abstract symbols in cultural consciousness, from many pasts and futures, imagined and inevitable, organic and industrial, human or alien.