Big Time Art Show in 2003

For those who didn't have the chance to see me my senior show in 2003 (which is about thirty people less than the world population), I finally got around to posting the pictures. Scroll down to the bottom of the Denver links on the left, and click on the link that says Senior Exhibition and click. I also have the gallery put together as a panoramic, so check the panoramic page as well.

The paintings were done by another student named James Warner. His paintings and my sculpture worked well together with the ambient hum of my speaker that was hidden in the box under the Tommy Gun Violin case.

Here is the Artist’s Statement that I wrote and hung on the music stand. This is the kind of thing you have to write to get a BFA in sculpture.
Enjoy…

Instruments of Torture
One of the intentions of any inventor, albeit an artist, musician, architect, or scientist, is to validate one's existence on Earth by creating. Typically, inventors put most of their effort into one pathway (artists to art, musicians to music, architects to buildings and scientists to research), but there are an unfortunate few who only find satisfaction in multiple, simultaneous pathways of creation. We, the Artists Omnifarious, have no choice but to torture ourselves by chasing exponential multiplicity in whatever forms we can.

The Mallion Violin series is a conglomerate of three-dimensional and four-dimensional pathways. My musical instruments/art objects/axes are a combination of studies in music theory, several apprenticeships in blacksmithing, and the desire to personify an aggressive timbre physically. They are designed to satisfy an aesthetic, but, more importantly, they are designed to work as a prosthetic by which further compositions, musical compositions, can be created. This cycle of exponential creation, the creation of artwork that is in turn used to produce more creations, formulates the Mallion Violin series concurrently as artwork and as tools. The thick, bladed, steel plate from which their frames are manufactured extends the manifold usage of the overall design as well: it allows the instrument to be used not only as a tool of creation, but also as a tool of defense, destruction and torture (torture of weaker instruments, of simply manufactured items and of lesser art forms). Synergizing all of these elements into one giant compound is the only possible way to efficiently pursue various hypotheses that are otherwise unconnected.

A large body of inventions speaks more loudly about a person than an epitaph, and all inventors are defined by the pathways they take to create. I have committed myself to combining metal craft and musical performance into an effusive fusion of theatre and stage paraphernalia in order to validate myself, not only as an inventor, but also as an Artist, Omnifarious.

Mine!
Erich von Meatleg