Project Narrative

The Slipping Glimpser is a contemporary interpretation of Chicago's World Columbian Exposition of 1892-1893. It is a large scale interactive and temporal artwork which carries on our history of exceeding the ordinary. Designed to take up the entire space of Linda Warren Gallery with its 160 feet of track, elegant curves, and clever contraptions, The Slipping Glimpser takes to heart Daniel H. Burnham's phrase "Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir mens' blood." It's main goal is to etch into the memories of the viewers an object of profound beauty that can stay with them through their days.

The inspiration for the project comes from ideas of beauty articulated by the White City and Willem de Kooning. "Slipping glimpser" is the phrase de Kooning used to describe himself- "...When I'm falling, I'm doing all right; when I'm slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting! It's when I'm standing upright that bothers me: I'm not doing so good; I'm stiff. As a matter of fact, I'm really slipping, most of the time into that glimpse. I'm like a slipping glimpser." Common themes running through the variety of my work is the temporality of beauty and the enlightenment certain kinds of destruction can bring.

The Catapult For The New Millennium, for instance was built to launch my career into the new millennium by catapulting objects across the Indiana/Illinois state line into the future. The ultra-sweet Treehouse series employ the slow process of erosion or, if we're being optimistic, growth. The tree grows and affects the miniature house built within its small boughs. The sculpture called You Are Not The First One To Destroy This was made specifically to damage a part of itself by lifting a massive stone out of its delicate cradle and then dropping it down spinning destructively into the structure no longer capable of holding it. The Motorium employed impossibly small mechanisms to put the audience in the uncomfortable position of possibly breaking them with their clumsy paws. The openness to the impermanence of sculpture expands its power to articulate the profound. For instance, the temporality of the Columbian Exposition allowed the architects to build an ensemble of buildings which would have otherwise been impossible to build, and that same embrace of the momentary edge of beauty is in de Kooning's breakthrough figural abstractions.

Warning! This sculpture may self-destruct. Yes, that's right. Just as you begin to admire the beauty of this mammoth roller-coaster type thing with its almost quiet squeaks an clanks, just as you are beginning to figure out some tenuous connection between it and some profundity of your own, just as you figure out that it might mean something... or nothing... or "Jesus, this guy is full of shit!" , Smack!, a Slipping Glimpser Sphere will come crashing impressively through some dainty little duflatchy, perhaps flying off track and through the window. Free at last. Free at last!

The Slipping Glimpser is an expansive sculpture with 160 feet of track and approximate dimensions of 50 feet long by 10 feet wide by 11 feet high. The behemoth is "No Small Plan." It has a mechanisms representing major buildings from the 1892-1893 exposition and sections devoted to the Wooded Island, the Midway Plaisance, and the Ferris wheel. Made out of Ash and Hickory, naturally light woods, the Glimpser has the appearance of delicacy. The machines work at varying speeds causing a build up and release of potential energy- quiet moments broken by the excitement of poetic movement. The fascinating human-powered machines and the uniformity of material (wood, wire, and stone) act as the architecture of the White City did in 1893 to affect the observer's world.

Integral to the project is the audience. Not only does your energy run the mechanisms of the sculpture through levers, cranks, and counterbalances, but you have a hand in the manufacturing of the Slipping Glimpser Spheres. At the first Drop the Ball Event, the audience through the Ball Dropper destroyed sculptures I constructed. Each fragment of sculpture was then encased in a clear P.B.A. certified bowling ball. These balls will be sold as an artist edition bowling ball at a later date.

The Slipping Glimpser is a multi-faceted project which stimulates dynamic audience interaction. The large sculpture is a generously permissive object. The graceful curves of the track carry the viewer through space teetering on fulcrums and diminutive rope bridges, wooden spirals and hefty stones, their ears ringing with clankety-clank sounds like from some forgotten windmill. Through the sculpture the observer stands on the edge between creation and destruction slipping into some glimpse of all too short beauty, and then poof! Like the Columbian Expo the experience is left to the slow fermentation of memory.