4 Players Hot House Rat Race I Won't Tell You the Rules

I feel honored to have been chosen as one of the artists for the CAN Triennial 2022 art celebration with the theme, You Are Here. While thinking about the theme, two different ideas emerged.

The first was the idea of how the You Are Here label on a map helps you understand your personal place in relationship to that map. Because I really enjoy games I began thinking about how maps and mazes are related and decided I would incorporate mazes of some sort into the work. This meshed well with my style and subject exploration in many ways. One of the things that helped me understand how well this connected with the whimsical nature of my work was when someone said one of the pieces reminded them of the Pac Man maps.

The second idea that continued to pop up when I was considering the meaning and implication of You Are Here is the ways in which our starting points in life impact the length and difficulty of the paths we're on, inevitably having enormous impact on our success in life. The greatest indicator for poverty is poverty. This led me to create mazes that are easier for some to solve than others or for outcomes of seemingly random choices to be positive or negative. I invite you to play along while thinking about the things in your life that have given you advantage or opportunity that others may not have.

If you would like to see my work for this show in person, please visit The Sculpture Center at 1834 E 123rd St, Cleveland, OH 44106.

Click on the following links for details on each of the four pieces.

• 4 Players

• Hot House

• Rat Race

• I Won't Tell You The Rules