Christopher Owen, artist’s statement.
My father was a jeweler who owned his own shop and did a lot of custom work. As a child I spent a lot of time at the shop playing with the carving wax used to make the models. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t want to be an artist. I went to art school and painted for a while but never got the satisfaction 3D sculpture brought me. Through practice I mastered wax carving and made a good living designing and carving production masters for various companies. Seeking even greater fortunes I began to focus on hand props for the movie industry. I made rings and small objects for special shots in the movies. I started working in a broader sense, making machines and substructures for larger movie props. This led to an idea to satisfy my need to create. I began to make machines that did nothing and were imperfect, a contradiction of what a machine should be. This idea evolved into an idea that I could make a machine and by its movement it would have its own life. By placing remnants of someone’s life within the machine I could keep their memory alive and part of there soul might remain for future generations to wonder who this person was and how they lived. Each individual part is carefully selected to create a whole meaning of the individual. Other pieces depict a moment in time and by placing just the right objects together I can create a feeling of nostalgia for those who lived through it and a sense of wonder for those who didn’t.
