Calendar

Since 2016, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts has welcomed dynamic artists to make work in its studios over a multi-week period, taking up residence in downtown Reading, PA. Each year, these experiences result in creative connections with the local community and culminate with an exhibition of objects, media, and installations made over the course of the residency. Works on view in this exhibition are selections donated from these resident artists to the nonprofit’s fledgling museum collection. 

Sculpture is a scuffle with gravity. Something like the dull hollow thud of the apple hitting Isaac Newton’s head. The duality of fragility and resilience of the body is mirrored in Mike's work. Unfinished wood, chipped plaster, and rusted steel become the broken history we have inherited. Stainless steel, titanium, fiberglass, and foam suggest the failure of our contemporary attempts at mending our fractured social structures. Paralleling the body with objects, Mike sees the physicality of sculpture as a way to create moments of crisis, where the resolution following can develop solidarity and compassion through conversation and dialogue.

Classical Greek medicine taught that there are four stages of a disease: onset, advancement, crisis, and resolution. The Greek word for crisis is 'krisis,' meaning decision. The crisis stage of a disease indicates the point in the illness where either the patient recovers or dies. In a less dramatic way, I try to perpetually keep my artistic practice in this state of crisis, of always being on the cusp of failure or success.