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People are used to seeing and thinking about you work in terms of large
architectural settings. Is the Autonomous series a move to break that
perception?
Well I like working big and im certainly not stopping that but I had
held the idea for a long time of using the structural integrity of glass
to produce smaller dwelling size sculptures. When the right client and
opportunity came along I became excited about the possibilities and
the Autonomous series emerged.
One issue for me
is the idea that through time peoples living spaces have always been
important to them. I like the idea of people accessing my work in their
every day life, so I had to make some thing that would fit that.
This series also opens the possibility of working with galleries is
that a factor?
A gallery environment opens the work up to a whole new set of people,
which is great. The sheer scale of most of my other pieces made that
pretty difficult. On the other hand I like my work to be out there,
in the living world. I don't think people should have to go to the "church
of art" to experience art.
How did you get connected with Sandra Ainsly gallery?
We knew about each other and had spoken before she moved to her new
location, I knew that I would like to do something with her in Toronto
but commissions always seemed to get in the way of nailing a show down.
Also working on the Autonomous series helped bring things together.
You are also talking about a show with the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

That's going to happen in spring 2007. What I envision here is a kind
of a glass tent environment. There is some thing kind of nomadic in
the way people live and get information, sampling ideas and media from
a lot of sources. This is really different from how people and artists
interacted in the past. Michelangelo would have been very much involved
in his own world in a way that people and artists are not today, our
frames of reference and image overload keep us shifting. That is one
set of ideas I am exploring for the WAG show.
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