Rob McKirdie

Lives and works in Spokane, WA, USA

Artist statement

Rob McKirdie Artist Statement. “The Things that Shake Loose...” Things that shake loose... are often pieces of material culture that separate themselves from a larger context and settle within the mundane corners of transient paths. Because I am myself a transient and contingent human being, I find myself searching in those mundane corners for the sediment of material culture. It is here that I find my raw source material and motivation as a sculptor. As I transfer those things that shake loose from one mundane corner of the world to my own space I develop an interior dialogue with those things, rather like an archaeologist trying to reconstruct the identity of a particular culture through collected and discarded materials. My dialogue with the collected materials involves an in-depth physical and emotional investigation of the limits and impactfulness inherent within each object, and the possible relationships between that object and other objects or physical elements. I then test my findings against other notions or narratives that attempt to explore illuminating codes of the nexus, genesis, or revelation implicit in those materials that I have collected as a peripatetic traveler. Upon completion, the work suggests new identities, new ways of seeing, which not only echo the illuminating code of the past through the material but, discovers a new energy--ranging from the spiritual and sacred, to interactive process and playfulness, which in the end may be the same thing.

Artwork