Copper Series

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The sculptures in this recent series are made from gleaming sheets of copper, a metal with a warm luminosity that immediately attracted me. Hammering the copper sheets feels like sculpting directly into light. With every strike of my hammer, I flatten and extend the metal, creating a topography of high and low relief bands, as well as contrasting textures and smooth areas that reflect and deflect the light, bouncing it across the sculpture’s surface.

Copper, a fairly common element, has been mined, extracted and hammered since pre-historic times. Modern industrial copper mining is extremely damaging to the environment, though once smelted, copper can be recycled indefinitely. The sheets I use are industrial rejects.

Though their overall composition is abstract, these wall-mounted low reliefs might suggest armor plates or a landscape of valleys and ridges, aerial views of barren terrains, deserts, rock formations and fossils. The radiance of the metal conveys both light and heat which, paired with the composition, reveals a sense of apocalyptic precarity.