WES VIRGINIA

This site is an archive for my artwork. It's an ongoing project, because I'm still making new work, and because I haven't yet finished mining my past (not to mention the endless temptation to revise)... Most of my work is constructed from or includes found material, for reasons you're probably familiar with: it's inexpensive; it's the "native material" I encounter in my everyday life, and reuse is an ecologically positive action. Though art from found material hasn't really been shocking since the days of R. Mutt (and there's been some question lately about whether that fountain was really found), there may still be something faintly subversive, in a consumer culture, in using castoff materials... I remember the day I first spotted a big pile of broken glass on the sidewalk, glinting in the light like Aladdin's hoard, with that lovely green color (I learned later that it was tempered glass, 3/8ths inch thick). The pile came from a broken pane of a MUNI bus-shelter. I knew I had to..