I am interested in my response to daily stimuli and the subsequent creation of harmonious compositions of materials, forms, and surfaces. I seek to communicate realizations of what I personally believe to be interesting and congruous material arrangements and spatial orders, using the work as an exploration into a personally affected environment. In the process of creating and assessing my work I seek to further clarify my own criteria used for evaluating my environment. I have found that my reaction to an object in my surroundings may have a lasting impact on my aesthetic preferences even though it may not be consciously recognized at the time, only later emerging as a visual motif in my work.
My reaction to the tangible environment informs my intuition. By parsing out simple elements from complex forms I am able to assess my own response. I seek to work towards a simplification of formal order to establish patterns of organization within my compositions. The uncertainty of not knowing or being able to articulate the correctness of a form or mark is unsettling but the observations are rewarding. The compositions retain in them the record of what visual stimuli inspired me to curate and construct them, even when the direct sources are unknown to me. The excitement of unknown is what perpetuates my thinking.
Bio
Ben received his MFA in Ceramics from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, and his BFA from University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, WI.
Ben's website
