Brent Somerhauser

There are thin, quiet places where invisible forces and visible material collide.
The surface of an empty page, approached by a pencil and a thought –
or a little wind meeting the world; nudging, persuading, diverting.

I believe there is a potency there at that barrier.
Where you might still lasso a daydream, or tug at moments each afloat in their own way.
There and not there,
everythings and nothings.
Both, at once.

A “tangle of matter and ghost,” as Leonard Cohen mentioned a time or two.

In my artwork, I often use familiar and practical objects to merge two types of memory –
the intangible mental process and the visible evidence of use left upon physical material.

I consider this a way to preserve a glimpse, or to build a prop to experience.
In coercing material to bend with both memory and structure, the imagined is made tangible while romancing the real.

Artist-in-residence during 2006.

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