Greg Stewart

Lives and works in Staunton, VA

Artist statement

My work begins with questions about how we inhabit a world that is continually changing, and how sculpture might help us imagine other ways of living within it. I bring together objects, bodies, plants, animals, language, and landscapes to explore relationships among movement, cultivation, memory, and disappearance. A sculpture might take the form of an animal carrying an orchard, a garment collecting atmospheric dust, or a commemorative plate made from unfired clay. These works often occupy uncertain positions between familiar categories: body and landscape, tool and specimen, monument and something beginning to fall apart. I am interested in what happens when a thing acquires another role, and how that shift changes our understanding of the relationships around it. Walking, carrying, planting, listening, and gathering are recurring actions in my practice. Materials participate through their own capacities to grow, accumulate, erode, or decay. Weather, gravity, time, and other people help determine what a work becomes. Sculpture provides a structure through which these exchanges can be encountered. My collaboration with Kosmologym extends these questions into games, physical activities, and shared experiments. Together, we explore how rules shape relationships among bodies, places, and other living things. Playing games becomes a way of thinking through action: participants negotiate unfamiliar situations, respond to one another, and discover how their decisions affect a...

Artwork