amowbray@earthlink.net                                     Artist statement

            The work I create begins with a question or frustration that I have with contemporary life. My reaction to this is the production of artwork, which hopefully results in a solution, however absurd it may be. The objects I craft, or the process of creating them, serve as a vehicle for a direct connection to a tangible experience for understanding and resolution of the dilemma at hand, or at least an understanding of the futile attempt to do so.
            I look to find something real in a world that I often consider disconnecting and artificial, from sanitized weather icons on the Internet, to intangible objects on view in museum collections. I look to the source of this mediated reality and want to reinterpret and experience it in my own terms or materials.           
            We surround ourselves with synthetic materials that dominate our culture, from children’s toys to shopping bags. Contemporary art and its ideas, metaphors, and the physical construct of the gallery can also be viewed as synthetic. In my work, I use these “artificial” materials to create a tangible experience. The object-based installations are derived from many sources, times and histories. I find parallels with past periods in time that may have had similar questions and use a blend of art and literary references to explore these ideas. While viewing all of those references as allegorical, I look for a personal connection with the objects through a functional performance.
Recently I’ve been questioning my relationship with museum objects of antiquity. These are often tactilely inaccessible to the viewer, as well as being removed and isolated from their cultures of origin, rendering them obsolete as functional objects whether, utilitarian or spiritual. Additionally, as descriptive information, classification, and cataloguing are passed down in a historical game of "telephone", the resulting, accompanying wall text attempts to describe the object's origin and purpose. These thoughts leave me to ponder the intentions of the objects, their creators, their craft, what I create, and how it functions.  I am fascinated by the transition or shift an object can make from purely function to aesthetic collectable.