“My work is based on the proposition that a person might be able to select a piece of plastic, cardboard or whatever and, through the application of their own thought and effort, transform it into something that is interesting and perhaps even provocative to look at. The artworks in this series were created by arranging and reconfiguring discarded materials such as cardboard, paper, plastic, fabric, and metal, and then securing them in a fixed arrangement.

“Though the completed compositions are sometimes hardly distinguishable from any other accumulation of debris, the designation of these particular accumulations as works of art invites the viewer to evaluate the aesthetic merits of the selections that have been made, including the arrangement that has been imposed and the qualities of the garbage itself (its colors, textures, edges, accretions, greasiness, stickiness, state of decay, etc.). The work invites a consideration of attraction versus revulsion, waste versus efficiency, restraint versus indulgence, uniqueness versus mass production, the transformative capacity of art, the meaning of garbage, and coming face to face with one's own participation in a society that produces it in abundance.”

Salt Lake City, 20 March 2020