Gallery Hours:
Hours 11-6
Thursday-Monday (closed Tuesday & Wednesday)

The Quicksilver Mine Co.
6671 Front St. (Hwy. 116)
Downtown Forestville

PHONE: 707.887.0799
FAX: 707.887.0146
MAIL: P.O. Box 844
Forestville, CA 95436

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� Sonoma's Own
The Quicksilver Mine Co.

Secret Lick
found, made, altered

Chris Beards Artist's Statement

August 24�September 30, 2007

I am an introverted, melancholy ball of Velcro careening through my brief existence. As I careen I pick up (collect) physical and conceptual items of interest. To feed my sculpture I am a constant collector. In my collecting, I have become particularly aware of 'multiples', items of more than one. I combine these items into a larger whole. New connections and relationships are discovered in this process.

Linked, strung, hung, stapled, tied together�there is an obsessive nature to the making of this body of work. Actions are repeated dozens, sometimes hundreds, even thousands, of times. I find something very basic in the patterned repetition of forms and actions. Patterns, repeating and non-repeating, bear a significant weight in this work. Patterns reassure us in an expectation of continuity and changelessness

This expectation is frustrated by non-repeating patterns. Somewhere I read that randomness is just part of an larger overall pattern which we are unable to perceive. Elsewhere I have read that the universe is not a steady clock, ticking away towards the future, but rather more of a froth of potential possibilities. I find it intriguing that everything has multiple possibilities and reality is a state of flux.

These works may be recognized as markers of such concepts as jealousy/resentment; an inability to let things go; voraciousness; the inevitability of pain; the hope of other existences; and the idea that one is not as unique/special as one had hoped/assumed. These markers are universally human and illuminate our basic nature.

The digital world may be changing and evolving at an incredible rate, but we humans are on a much slower road to real change. The formal organization of the work is the simple logic of the machine. I find a warm reassurance and subversive humor from the hand-made mimicking the machine-made. The machine-made has a spare and logical elegance of form which I admire and emulate. Extraneous gestures and flights of fancy are reduced (but not eliminated) to allow a simplicity to shine through

 This is in conscious rejection of our ever-increasingly cluttered bells & whistles culture in which we are drowning in options. I am interested in the marks and evidence of time, in things that have a history. I create distressed surfaces that reflect the passage of time�the bittersweet reminiscences of once was and never again.

�Chris Beards

click on images for larger views

Artist's Resume

"Secret Lick" Show 2007

"Multiples, Repetitions, Patterns" Show 2012