"Inspired By Dante"

The drawings and sculpture I have presented, are based upon the Italian poem, the Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri around the year 1300. In the Divine Comedy, Dante journeys through the Inferno (hell), Purgatorlo, and Paradiso. He describes, with captivating detail, the plight of the souls he sees, either doomed to eternal suffering in hell or paying penance upon the mountain of Purgatory. He finally reaches the Paradiso, where the glories of indiscriminate love and joy abound.

I am drawn to the perennial and universal quality of the Divine Comedy. It is a masterpiece of Humanity and the human condition. It makes little difference to me whether one believes in "heaven" or "hell" as ultimate destinations for the soul, or alternatively, in reincarnation. What I do find important in Dante's poem are his frequent references to free will, reason and essentially, the law of Karma. Karma is the eastern doctrine that follows the adage "we reap what we sow." In other words, actions have consequences. This philosophy forces one to become flilly aware of one's decision making process, by determining whether our decisions for action or inaction are good moral choices, or choices that cause harm to ourselves and others. Dante continually draws upon these themes, which I find as pertinent to the twentieth century as it must have been in the fourteenth.

Work for this series was begun in the autumn of 1994. I was interested in the poem because of it's subject matter and had no intention of illustrating the work. As I read the poem, Dante's highly visual descriptions of his encounters stimulated me as an artist, and in response, I began making the drawings. The drawings are intended to convey the "feeling" of a particular "canto" or passage. Although Dante ofien refers to color when describing his visions, I chose to limit myself to charcoal and black pastel because I felt that the power of these mediums would best represent the subject matter. With no "color" one relies more heavily upon compositional design, texture, and value to convey content. For instance, in The Proud, Dante describes the souls who must crawl about the mountain of Purgatory with a stone slab upon their backs. The stone represents the burden of their pride, and crushes them down beneath it's weight. In the drawing, I attempt to create a feeling of weight and heaviness, by placing the subject low in the picture plane and rely on shape and texture to pull the eye downward. The rich black space in the top portion of the drawing, creates compositional balance without relieving the visual weight or "heaviness" of the rest of the drawing.

When exhibited, I include passages from the poem on the exhibition labels which serve to deepen the viewers experience and understanding of the work.

The Sculpture, The Seven Deadly Sins, developed as a response to the reading and subject matter. I conceived the idea of viewing one's own eyes, pure and bright, through a mask reflected in a mirror. Each mask represents one of the seven sins. This interaction with the sculpture makes a very intriguing and thought provoking experience because the viewer becomes "part" of the sculpture. In essence, the mask becomes a metaphor for the body or outer shell, and the eyes reveal the soul or inner self.

The sculptures consist of a welded steel stanchion mounted on a circular base. The stanchion supports a clear acrylic mask (formed from a clay face mask.) Around each mask is an armature with various materials assembled to symbolize a sin. Gluttony features a "headdress" of silverware, zipper parts, buttons, belts and pheasant feathers. Sloth uses an assemblage of clock and watch parts with a guilded message around an old plow wheel, that reads "Time waits for no one." Pride crowns itself, with a crown of nails and Envy uses iron rebar, twisted into eerie snake-like forms, to resemble the mythological creature Medusa. The other sins include wrath, lust and avarice. The sculptures are placed in front of large wall mirrors, and the viewer looks through the mask to see his reflection.

The sculptures complement the drawings because of their subject matter and additionally enhance the installation in two ways. Aesthetically, they add the appeal of three dimensional form, which visually breaks up the space in the gallery. More importantly however, they add a very contemporary feel to the installation which forms a psychological bridge between a medieval interpretation of sin and the afterlife to the present day.

The themes of Humanity, free will, consequence of action, and morality are timeless and ever in need of attention and examination. The exhibit stimulates the viewer on many different levels and I have included some visitor comments from a recent exhibit of the work at Indiana University Kokomo. It is with great enthusiasm and sincerity that I present this exhibit for consideration.