Tentacles

Artist Statement

Tentacles I thought of the materials we now put in landfills: how they have a much more exotic nature than just regular garbage, being composed of rare metals, acids, plastics and solvents; and that these might mix with the rotting garbage to breed some,( here's where a B rated, sci-fi movie started swelling my mind) protuberant, lifeform. In my drawings, a shape like a tentacle and some egglet shapes emerged. I was digging through some disturbing dreams and day-mare fantasies in a comic book miasma. The digging led to a cavern where Nosferatu was haunting a gigantic squid-thing. There was music. A kind of shrieking, Theremin-like wail...and pounding rythms. Squalid mist was floating around while ray gun beams shot sadly against the cave walls; pointless efforts of the spacemen to vanquish the monsters. Spurred on by being wierded-out and fascinated about the tentacle/egglet form I continued the drawings with oil pastels and graphites that partially quenched the gooey need to want to curl up to the alien protuberances. Then I added oil paintings, a medium that expanded the luscious, liquid thicknesses that the line work sometimes hinted at. The turgid tension and textures of the drawings and paintings begged to be dimensionalized into mixed media sculptures, a familar medium for me. Irony presents itself in the materials of these sculptures being some of the very materials that were destined for the landfill. I also sculpted in a material I hadn't worked much with before; bronze. I became entranced with challenging, "burn-out" techniques that produced "unique" bronze tentacles from my mixed media, burnable, materials. The death of each original sculpture in this process was, at first, petrifying to my 'saver' mentality. But, rewards were waiting in the way of exquisite, fine textures, and intricate forms that could then be embellished through wire brush polishing, chemistry patinas, and oil paint washes. Recovering consciousness from the heat of ray guns, alien tentacle goo and cold space cavern walls, my jittery soul found only brief repose. These shapes return to thrill and confound me and continue to make quivering stance here and there as I search the studio for their off -switch. Which I may never find. Steve Storz, 2008