Artist Statement: “Athletic Identity”

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Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through.  Sport gives players an opportunity to know and test themselves.

-Rita Mae Brown

The foundation for this series started with a theme of "Athletic Identity." As a soccer player as well as an art student here at St. Olaf, I find myself in a puzzling social gap between the solitary artist and the factions of athletes.

Each piece started with an iconoclastic picture of Michael Jordan which I then laced with specific symbols, such as The Endless Knot. Iconoclasm is "image-breaking" which generally entails a deliberate avoidance or destruction of an idolatrous image recognized within a culture. The rest of the piece evolved instinctively. Artists often refer to this as a sense of "play." Using charcoal, watercolor, pen and ink, and marker, I tried to keep a strong emphasis on the "plasticity" of marks. Some are fluid and loose while others are rigid and tight. Often working on several pieces at once, I would react to the other marks I had previously laid. Overall, I tried to keep the process fluid yet the ideas behind the images constant.