Spirit of Place

Artist Statement
Serving as an amplification of industry tradition and environmental impact, Alex’s sculptural fiber work pays ethnographic tribute to past and present cultures by expanding from the industrious nature itself to include impacted societies. Plunging into these environments recognizes that tasks of utilitarian purpose can fail to acknowledge aesthetics and beauty around the radius of their enterprise. Traditionally an ode to conquest and adventure, the visual representations of seagoers can be imbalanced to favor self-touting stories over emotion, heritage, and ethnography. Alex’s focus on this particular void in maritime cultural preservation shifts certain viewpoints, highlighting aspects of nautical culture, community and creativity in forms ranging from a single strand of hair, to rusted steel cable and all the imaginable in between. Alex achieves this by not only recognizing specific patterns for objective composition, but by the way he curates the types of materials that work within those patterns, providing visual depth that carries on the histories and stories in which it was originally used for, but ending up with a delicate texture that challenges its rugged lifecycle.

Cultural preservation is not the only focus though. The sustainability of Alex's material, which is primarily retired ship's rope, ironically highlights an unsustainable practice through the sheer quantity of synthetic materials that becomes fragmented, littering our oceans and marine ecosystems. Orchestrating subtle textures and curvature in sculptural form, Alex suspends the materials current state and focuses on the stories held within the industrious fiber patinas stating, this is only the beginning of the rope’s life, not the end. Every segment is unique and treated as a scarce commodity, like a thumbprint from the sea. Each sculpture carries with it a historical value as well as artistic. Some materials were used in duties such as assisting in the turning of the U.S.S. Constitution in Boston Harbor, while other inferior constructs gain their value as they become rarer due to the innovation of synthetic industrial textiles.