TOR DETTWILER

Articulating Anxiety

In Found-Object Figure Sculpture

Less is not more in the manic mind of the sleepless.  The drive to succeed speeds our hearts to pulse past the present, pestering the details of a utopian future.  My multi-step, multi-media, sculptural process is an exasperating microcosm of our insomnia-prone “due yesterday” society.  The need to scratch the aesthetical itch I currently cannot reach compels me to create three-dimensionally. 

Analogizing underwater phenomena, focuses my fearfilled feelings, into a personal symbol system that provides a degree of coherence to a cryptic array of ideas.  Choosing the shark as an archetype for our perpetuating internal stress, I can metaphorically indulge in a multitude of primeval spookings, that continue to influence our modern life. 

Turning a phrase, proverb, myth, or mundane phenomena with my theme brings a welcome air of buoyancy to an otherwise self-sinking subject. This tangent thinking is often archeo-il-logically inspired by the physical shape, color and context of the found objects I collect.  Such compositional phrase-lathing, within the tactile richness of sculptural space, fused in the bio-graphical form of the anatomically exposed figure, frozen in the eternal struggle for survival, is what I am anxiously attempting to articulate in my work.