Shift

Artists

• Bean Finneran

Statement

"Then look at the human anatomy. We are all curved surfaces, curving structure, curving muscle and sinew. This form evolved because it minimizes the amount of materials and maximizes structural strength."
- Eugene Tsui

I work with a simple elemental form, a curve made from the most basic natural material, clay. I make and build with hundreds or thousands of these forms. The clay curve connects me to time, the earth, the elements and human culture. The geometry of a curve weaves and allows construction. The clay curves I roll are each similar but unique connecting them to the natural world where blades of grass are almost the same but never quite the same. The process I use to construct the sculptures follows the patterns in nature. The shapes grow in the space allotted them through adding curve after curve. The forms are always transitory, in a space for a given amount of time. The sculptures cannot be moved without taking them apart and reconstructing them. They are built curve-by-curve and disassembled one by one. This process of continual and possible change and transformation connects me to the natural world along with the ordered chaos that comes from organizing thousands upon thousands of individual elements into a form. I garden. I love color and light and the changes light and shadows create. With the sculptures I compose with bright color and form in a space. With its deliberately 'un-natural' color, the work celebrates aspects of nature but does not attempt to mimic it. The constructions are abstract ... rings, lines, cones, circles but often evoke real things: sea anemones, coral reefs, haystacks or wind blown grasses.

- Bean Finneran, 2005