An Artist's Statement

There are all different kinds of tones you can take in your artist’s statement. Here’s an example of the “why I make what I make” statement. It provides background that feeds the reader’s imagination. Ideal reader: someone who’s seen the work, and wants permission to understand it, love it. Who wrote it? Alfred Steiner “I spent my elementary school years in rural Ohio, in a big pile of animal parts. My best friend’s dad had a VCR with only three VHS tapes, one of which was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was my favorite, and not just because the fictional events took place on the day I was born. There’s a scene in it where one of the nubile victims stumbles into a room strewn with bones—mostly animal—at once terrifying and rustic in the yellow Texas sun. Not to be outdone, my friend and I discovered a boneyard ourselves while roaming a nearby farm, harvesting a few cow skulls that we cleaned with bleach. There was also this fur dealer who lived in a hovel, just past the creek. In our only encounter, I watched this man enthusiastically carve out the heart of a fox and hand it to me. (I had asked for the organ to use in a third-grade science project.) But even that experience didn’t prepare me to find a severed blue eye staring back at me from the mailbox. Lowering the door of the box, I found the milky, apple-sized sphere suspended in a jar of formaldehyde. Turns out this horse eyeball was a gift from our veterinarian, who had already noticed my peculiar predilection. Pressing my memory for other seminal experiences involving animal entrails, I come up empty. But I do remember my friend telling me that his dad had a fourth videotape. Adult cartoons.”