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ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is the result of my unfaltering attraction to foundry activities and casting events. Casting, in a traditional sense, yields a very predictable result. Patterns are formed, molds are constructed around them, and through various processes the identity of the object is altered to obtain specific properties and identities. Within the scope of my casting explorations, there seemed to be a constant referencing of the original, or pattern, that I found to be forced, contrived, and overall problematic. This use of the referential form, especially when cast, becomes a surrogate for an original and therefore, a falsification. As a resolution to this problem, I try to make a conscious invitation to the properties of these materials and the processes employed to manipulate them to play a more substantial role.

Recently, my choices are more so a retrospective investigation of my beginnings as a printmaker than they are object making. Intuitive responses to mark making and line qualities have become critical and I find myself investigating this in many different ways. One is by constructing identically formatted permanent molds for me to repeatedly cast metals into. Once the metals are in the open mold marks are made into them while they remain molten and are beginning to gel and solidify. There are many factors allowing for very dynamic marks to form from the simplest of mark making. Another method, although very similar, is casting into predefined information such as cracks and checks in a series of multiple wooden beams. By casting metals into a combustible, many contributions are made to the identities of the casting and the altering of mold cavity. Values are assigned to both mold and casting and are determined only by the dialogue between the two at that given moment. There becomes a synthesis between mold and metal to form a much more sincere and truthful product uninhibited by the burden of the referential.

Either casting into wooden beams or marking directly into metals, I feel it very important that I employ the casting process for its associations as a traditional means of mass production and a subsequent alteration of an identity. However similar these multiplied objects seem, there are very distinct qualities within their details where I find differentiations and commonalities throughout. The process of casting presents many questions and issues of authenticity, origin, and composition of identities. I view these works as a documentation of idiosyncrasies within systems of repetition that have a very unique quality to them. These become repeated objects without an exact replication. I find these are methods that allow me to explore metaphor of how we are set into systems and defined by roles constructed and deemed a reality by society.

Casey V. Westbrook