Smiles, Black Bronze, 2018

bronze sculpture
10.5” x 13.5” x 12.5”

Smiles was born as one of those quick and ephemeral ideas that could have fled my mind before I ever acted on it. But what it became was the genesis of a whole new direction for my artistic practice, launching the stylistic move towards the Crazy Stuffed Animal series and all my subsequent work.

A Teddy Bear with an upside-down face: The concept itself is ridiculously, beautifully simple. I was immediately drawn to it because, in its unabashed simplicity, it served as a visual metaphor for living and thinking differently, going against what society dictates and veering off the expected path in life, and doing it all with a smile...in short, everything that I believed in and practiced since I plunged myself fully into my art career some years before.

If you think of Smiles as the mascot for my artistic creed, it is fitting that the sculpture’s surface is laced with traces of my hand. If you look closely, you will see the faint trails of my fingertips where they imprinted on the bits of oil clay in the original sculpture, evidence of the time and presence that went into making Smiles come to life.