I’m Mason, a sculptor and collector. I was born and raised in San Francisco, CA, and am currently studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design.
I employ a variety of mediums but I’ve more recently been working on plywood panel assemblages. These compositions muddy the boundaries of painting, drawing, relief carving, collage, and sculpture. Thematically I explore endings, queer desire, manifestations of physical and digital presence, and trees as devices of time keeping and archive.
As a sculptor, my work is invested in the potential presence of objects. I am wooed by materials which have endured their own lifetimes of touch. I am swayed by the romance of aged surfaces, faded corners, and ragged edges.
I alter images, paper, and wood to generate objects which transcend lucidity. I collage and alter ephemera, photographs, and archival material in an effort to coalesce the disparate histories they reference. My aim is to complicate the superficial potential of an image through the transmutation from surface into object. I use lumber, sand paper, glue, and varnish to re-adhere and re-shape, to fuse and collapse. Competing gestures of wear and finish impart a new history onto the content, raising doubts about when finish(ing) ends, or if it ever truly began.
I am currently thinking about finishing as both a gesture and an end in itself. This announcement of “finish” seems an illusory demarcation. Myths of progress enable an escape from our slippery present, embracing the conditions and language of the “past.” To declare a thing as “finished” - be it an artwork, era, or feeling - enables a necessary affordance: the permission to look forward. I’m curious about this human inclination to ruminate quietly despite an endless procession of time which does not concern itself with matters of finish. Time cannot acknowledge achievement or origin or failure. It knows no end.
What does finish afford us beyond permission? I’m interested in exploring what is gained from an unending presence. I hope to know if it is gained from an acceptance of “un-finish.”