Jeff Owen

Artist Statement

My technique is brute force, decide-at-the-moment.

My creative process emerges with patterns. I incorporate patterns into all of my sculpture. Taking one piece of steel, adding to it, or deleting from it, then ending when the sculpture encompasses all of my creativity, this is what charges up my artistic energies. When my creative force is flowing, I work on a sculpture to completion. It is finished when the creative flow ends.

I have been an artist all my life. I am fascinated with engineering and architecture. The shapes of metal, its patterns, textures and grains; all entice me to create. My ability to cut and weld metal allows me to create any art I desire.

My aspiration is to create sculpture that is unique, something that no one has done before. I resist conformity and mass production. My art is as individual as I am.

My art belongs to our present time or any time. My art does not represent reality inspired by the real world. It makes use of patterns representing independent relationships with no reference - "contemporary-abstraction".

I take delight in rummaging through metal scrap yards, finding those particular pieces of steel that stir me in some way or other. I have feelings for inanimate objects. When I see something tossed aside, I ponder why? I wonder where it has been and where it is going.

Each piece I touch has its own individual tale. Was it once part of a bridge, supporting travelers to distant cities? Was it once part of a water tower, supplying nourishment to gardens? Was it used to manufacture others, like itself? When I’ve rescued that piece from limbo, it may take me only moments, or possibly many months, to understand within myself what that metal wants, or needs, to become.

Only then will I fulfill “its” dream.