Jay Roth

Materials vary from hot to cold during their journey through the cosmos. It’s a joy to work with materials like steel, which is high in iron. A cosmic circumstance: as a massive star fuses iron, which absorbs energy rather than expelling it, gravity takes over and it collapses. This collapse triggers a massive explosion; a supernova. The doomed star will spray tons of iron into the void, to coalesce and join the many other elements created by such a massive event. Said elements have miraculously piled and burned long enough to create the Earth and myself.  I bend, clamp, weld, melt and crush it to express a burst of my physical energy into an erratic composition. Gestural abstractions frozen in time, quick and abrupt yet meticulously conceived. Scales and mounts vary from massive to light. Notes, drawings, and pigments are torn, cut and clamped into steel bends. As I play, polish, and ponder the many implications of the metal’s strength; I wish to capture a moment of exposed thought. A minuscule explosion that is fleeting, fragile, generative and strong.