Steve Silber, Monday April 24, 2006

Every artist has his muse. For me, moments of inspiration are most gratifying. I love a notion; a fleeting epiphany. When a notion works it becomes an idea. When a series of ideas are grouped together, they can become a concept. When the concept is layered between the past, present, future, social, physical, and metaphysical, it becomes a story; no, more than a story, it becomes tradition. I am constantly searching for a collective conscious.

My inspiration and the way I approach art are directly affected by the varied and wide-ranging hats I have worn. As a victim of kidnapping I learned about vulnerability of life. As a failing high-school student I learned the role of manipulator. Having been a competitive ski racer, I have innate awareness of spatial relationships. Working at a diner in upstate New York washing dishes, I lived the life of menial laborer. As a ski and snowboard instructor in Aspen I worked among the lines drawn between socioeconomic classes. A United States Marine is aware of strength in leadership as well as the power of the multiple. Having been a platoon sergeant in an anti-terrorism security team, I am able to project myself past the inane to the essentials of what most matters in life.

My combined experiences naturally influence my work. I have a very specific and intuitive aesthetic. I consider the effect a work will have on mood, social relationships, and general activity in relation to the physical space, although sometimes my work becomes limited, by what can be made with clean lines or a very smooth and modeled aesthetic. Wrestling with elements of control, I find myself attracted to forms I completely understand. In such a confusing universe, there is something satisfying about a perfect shape or curve giving awareness of the exact space in contains and a solid color.

In the search for successful work, my process concentrates more on the question than the answer. For it is within a series of questions that the answers I search for lie. A question is open to possibilities; an answer is finite. This essay does not intend to make grand sweeping viewpoints on life the universe and everything. Instead, I simply wish to use writing as a learning tool, opening a dialogue; an initiation point to establish conversation. I am interested in the questions arisen by art/artists. I am interested in the certain way an individual may, or may not, gaze upon the world. Visual art is not linear or an objective to obtain, but a thought to more completely understand. It is this aspect of art, this respect and desire for the idea, which I strive to maintain. While considering a space for a potential installation I ask the questions: What is it? What was it? What could it be? I ask these questions to gain an understanding of the space. I ask in order to allow my instincts to take over. I ask in order to gain the story, the story of the space, the story of the people within the space, and the story of the overriding cultural themes surrounding the space. I wish for my installations to illustrate the story, to paint the words. Investigating a space in this way, I am looking as though I had never seen it before, no actually I am looking as though I had never seen before at all. I am addicted to counter-points and aspire to provide more obtuse perceptions. I study through the microscope, then retreat to the mountaintop to gain a new view. I take the seemingly ordinary and invert its expectations to make the extraordinary, intensifying by reduction and expanding with illusion.