Secret Lick
found, made, altered

Chris Beards Artist's Statement

August 24—September 30, 2007

I am an introverted, melancholy ball of Velcro careening through my brief existence. As I careen I pick up (collect) physical and conceptual items of interest. To feed my sculpture I am a constant collector. In my collecting, I have become particularly aware of 'multiples', items of more than one. I combine these items into a larger whole. New connections and relationships are discovered in this process.

Linked, strung, hung, stapled, tied together—there is an obsessive nature to the making of this body of work. Actions are repeated dozens, sometimes hundreds, even thousands, of times. I find something very basic in the patterned repetition of forms and actions. Patterns, repeating and non-repeating, bear a significant weight in this work. Patterns reassure us in an expectation of continuity and changelessness

This expectation is frustrated by non-repeating patterns. Somewhere I read that randomness is just part of an larger overall pattern which we are unable to perceive. Elsewhere I have read that the universe is not a steady clock, ticking away towards the future, but rather more of a froth of potential possibilities. I find it intriguing that everything has multiple possibilities and reality is a state of flux.

These works may be recognized as markers of such concepts as jealousy/resentment; an inability to let things go; voraciousness; the inevitability of pain; the hope of other existences; and the idea that one is not as unique/special as one had hoped/assumed. These markers are universally human and illuminate our basic nature.

The digital world may be changing and evolving at an incredible rate, but we humans are on a much slower road to real change. The formal organization of the work is the simple logic of the machine. I find a warm reassurance and subversive humor from the hand-made mimicking the machine-made. The machine-made has a spare and logical elegance of form which I admire and emulate. Extraneous gestures and flights of fancy are reduced (but not eliminated) to allow a simplicity to shine through

This is in conscious rejection of our ever-increasingly cluttered bells & whistles culture in which we are drowning in options. I am interested in the marks and evidence of time, in things that have a history. I create distressed surfaces that reflect the passage of time—the bittersweet reminiscences of once was and never again.

—Chris Beards

click on images for larger views

"Now & Laters,"
Mixed media and stained envelopes,
49" X 37" X 9", 2007

Artist's Resume

"Secret Lick" Show 2007

"Multiples, Repetitions, Patterns" Show 2012

Secret Lick found, made, altered

Chris Beards Artist's Statement

August 24—September 30, 2007

Secret Lick
found, made, altered