TOM DEGROOT - statement
Corrugated cardboard, though a humble material of staid uniformity, can yield a bounty of graceful and organic forms. Resin, with its transparency, fluidity and leveling, is a fortuitous stand-in for water, the primordial substance of life, and metaphor of philosophers and poets. In its flow around and over the corrugated hills, the way it puddles, levels, and drips, in its clarity or translucence, and in its bubbles and eddies, it becomes a flowing, dynamic, almost-alive substance. In the same way that close observation of a stream or piece of driftwood can give an intuition of the vastness of nature, I intend the interaction of my materials to provide an experience of the underlying forces and rhythms that animate the natural forms of the world. Tom DeGroot |
For a long time, I have found the shapes and forms of my work through an investigation of its materials, as much as from some initial conception.