As both an instrument of utility and an emblem of endurance, metal — steel in particular — may be the most significant base material to support the history of human experience, standing as it does upon stone. 

Metals are fundamental matter. While iron is among the most abundant elements on Earth, steel, an alloy of iron, is not elemental. It is the product of centuries of work and refinement. That history, written at the intersection of found potential and ambitious intent, may be latent yet it is inextricable from the presence and significance of metallic forms. Cut/Drawn is a direct intervention in that history, a disruption, however slight, that acknowledges, challenges, and illuminates the integrity of character embodied by one of the most ubiquitous of things. 

Steel is common but fascinating. It is so common because it is so extraordinary. Nothing else is as efficient, strong, resilient, lightweight, and affordably produced. Steel is versatile, even stronger in tension than it is in compression, and elastic enough to absorb great stress without fracturing or changing shape. It is tough, even symbolic of toughness. The word steel is used to invoke the girding of oneself in preparation for adversity, and its linguistic root lies in the ancient Germanic notion of standing fast. Steel yourself. Hold true. Resist. Even as inner reinforcement, steel is armor. Cut/Drawn, however, is like a peek under that armor, a coaxing exposure of the hidden and vulnerable quick.

Cut/Drawn is the result of precise and forceful mechanical challenges to material strength. Cut/Drawn does not employ heat and the difference matters. Steel in the crucible, amorphous and incandescent, may be cast into any shape desired. But the steel with which Cut/Drawn begins is already given a particular shape: an industrially rolled sheet. That shape is itself an embodied record of the intentions and uses to which steel is put, without which the medium would not perform as it does. Cutting and drawing describes the intervention we make in this material presence. We cut it from its intended utility and draw out from it an alternative expression of its specific manufacture. But cutting and drawing is also the limited pallet of manipulations that constitute the work. The steel is cut precisely and drawn out with enormous tension. That is the sum of methods. 

The process is as delicate and forceful as the results are elaborate and vigorous. It matters how the forms are made because willfulness and desire are not utterly dominant over the material. It is not beaten

into a representation or function. It is not rarified to an abstraction. It is not postured into commentary or

concept. It is, however, damaged. It is stressed. It is made to fail and the manner of that failure is the content of the conversation between artist and medium. 

Questions are posed and, as ever, deep answers require precise incisions. The work aims to cut to the quick, to expose the ethos of the steel sheet—its way of being. The steel is subjected to stressful situations wherein its base nature is not simply revealed, as it is in the crucible, but is articulated in response to the challenge. The material does as it must, according to its intrinsic aspect and its conditioned character. As with a person, therein lies its integrity and failing well, as opposed to appearing effortless, is the brute proof. 

The challenge is mutual. Steel tends to hold to the point of utter failure at its weakest point rather than open up with supple elegance throughout. The work, also, cannot be corrected or adjusted. All form making is done simultaneously. The artist’s action must therefore be harmonic with the integrity of the steel, with its ability to stand fast and its unwillingness to yield gracefully. When the work does not fail well, a misunderstanding of the material obtains. 

Because the work is a dialogue with the material rather than an imposition of predetermined forms, the process must have an ethos of its own. It must be given to a particular way and hold true to that way—though it is not quite freely chosen, so much as negotiated with the material. Cut/Drawn is a study in form. It is a critical reflection of, and a conversation about the facts of materiality, the transformative intentions of work, and the disclosure of character.