ARTIST’S INSPIRATION: This piece is from a series of sculpture that I call “Balls”. In each of these works, I’ve taken a variety of everyday objects as subjects and, using the materials that are natural to that specific thing, re-presented that thing as a sphere. I chose this form because it’s basic and
I didn’t have to design it. I wanted to limit my “artistic” intervention to this simple transformation without having to impose any subjective choices or matters of style. By representing these subjects as spheres, I want the viewer to reconsider the role of the artist as well as the true nature of things. In other words, to see something for what it is not: a ball.
The Trolley Ball is fashioned after the historic Streetcar #1300 that was built in 1908 by the Twin City Rapid Transit Company, a public transportation system that provided rail service to the community between 1880 and 1954.
A person does not have to be behind bars to be a prisoner. People can be prisoners of their own concepts and ideas. They can be slaves to their own selves.