Barrister's Gallery, Sam Crosby Statement

Sam Crosby
Brief Artist Statement

The sources that generate my imagery emerge from my experiences,
my possessions and my memories. I make what I know. Objects of
the banal and the domestic propagate my work—a linoleum tile, a
cupcake, a child’s donkey. Often, I replicate these artifacts, a process
that summons ideas of obsession and adoration. Many of the objects
that inspire me are manufactured industrially, but through my translation,
they become hand-made. While these polarities seem independent, they
thrive in union. The hand-made gains its power from the existence of the
industrially-produced, and the industrially-produced gains its power from
the existence of the hand-made. Without the unfinished border, the
manufactured pattern is cold. My pieces concern the space in between,
neither wholeheartedly of the hand nor of the factory.

In a similar manner, I find inspiration in the marriage of cynicism
and sincerity. Bickering lovers, the pair must live together in my work.
Like Nebuchadnezzar II who built a jungle for his nostalgic queen, my
objects attempt to reconcile the earnest and the impossible. Can the
sincere possibly stand up to the cynical? Can the partners play nicely?

Also driving my work is a fascination with the psychology of the everyday.
A thin line divides the optimistic and the futile, the cheery and the hopeless,
the funny and the pathetic. My works toe this line and reveal its flimsiness.
Ideally, they fluctuate, changing each time the viewer prods them. The works
should have a life of their own, a shifting spirit that summons a narrative of
their maker, their creation, and their function. Who giddily breaks his back
painting the linoleum tile, a square panel that will never be the same as a
real bathroom tile? Who suffers lovingly forming paper cones that will
never be worn during the party? Trembling on the tightrope between art
and life, the objects and images must quietly endure limbo, trying.