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This is my artist statement i wrote in October, the middle of my senior year of college at Rhode Island School of Design. I am guessing this could be a start to my thesis. I am going to go through it and write new thoughts.

John Berry
October 28, 2008
Artist Statement

Through drawings, videos and sculpture I like to play between tight consideration and free exploration of linear lines in space, architecture, and structure, while maintaining ideas of the self. (This sentence doesn't even make sense) Personal memory, self-reflection, personal moments or what the self means to me, are often investigated. ( This sentence is redundant) Architecture and structure interest me because of the precise lines, the walls that enclose us, and the negative space where invisible planes exist. Using metal, wood and various other materials, I deal with the space around us. Using existing architectural elements and themes I try to create new landscapes through existing ones. When exploring the self I often find myself using more personal materials like video, drawings and found objects. I explore the personal self while dealing with bigger topics of gender, religion, and personal memory. I never feel limited conceptually or materially. My art is trying to make a connection with the space around us, but also dealing with the personal memory, connecting them both with a linear aesthetic.
Personal memory has always been an intrinsic theme in my work. It is hard for me to disconnect myself from my work. These personal pieces give me an outlet to deal with the personal interest in gender, sexuality, and religion in a much broader field. I like to use my self as the medium usually performing a repetitive act or daily routine. It shows how I see as art in the every day routine or ritual. Even though some may not see these routines as art, they are just as important to me as the object or performance. My personal work is also always in flux materially and conceptually, because the personal is always in flux.
My sketchbook is where the ideas begin to form. Drawing is very important to me and helps me sort out my thoughts. When I draw fictional spaces I create false landscapes that provide depth and perspective. From these drawings I then chose a material that I find most suiting. Recently these drawings have taken form in steel rod. In my drawing in space exercises I like to use steel rod for the quickness I can weld shapes and literally draw in space. These metal sculptures are trying to mimic my drawings in creating a false landscape, while interrupting the room with their placement and size.
I like hobbies and craft. Currently I am interested creating specific processes that have an output, repetitive actions that have an outcome, have a finished object in the end; like weaving, crocheting, knitting and sewing there is a repetitive action that results in a finished product. These practices are often stuck in the realm of craft.
Currently I am making a linear plane, basically a rectangle made of wood with string tightly running long ways from one bar to the other to create a flat linear plane to project movies onto. By projecting the movie onto the string it is going to split up into lines of color form and movement. The projection is of my body making simple gestures. This is just a start of trying to combine the linear lines in space and the personal but also investigating the chopping up of the body, the projection and the space behind it.
I don’t really know how to end this accept to say that I still don’t even know what art necessarily is or isn’t. I see it everyday, I see it every minute, it could be that mark dragged across my wall from move in day, or maybe its just the idea. When I do know what art is, I will let you know, and I will make a lot of it.

never min never mind this is alll bull shit. lets start over start over freshh.

Straight Foward Ideas: (lets try to make 100.

1. Knitting using two people and their arms as the knitting needles. knitting a blanket big enough to cover themselves.
2. Going back to memory. Memory of my childhood making objects with meaning and honesty.
3. Still exploring the idea of Jesus as phenomena.
4. Working in the wood and metal shop to hone my skills and not lose them.
5. Letting the material speak for itself.
6. projecting onto several different intsersecting screens that encompass a room.
7. Making a french knitting loop big enought for my body so that i cant knit a womb around myself. ***
8. knitting the body obscurred.
9. buy a knitting machine
10. knitting the first page of the bible.
11. knitting covers to obscure tv screens ***
12. holograms, continue hologram research.
13. learn to knit pattern.***
14. knit mrs. owen into a knit square.
15. knit a texas.
16. make a box to contain the orange rods.
17. BECOME RADICALLY SIMPLE.***
18. Research net making and knotting.***
19. Make copys of anything inspiring in the library. ***
20. Knit an obscured shape net to fit over a structure of wood that is busting out.
21. knit a marijuana leaf.
22. Create a landscape throgh knitting, weaving, wood and metal.
23. Knit an Algorithm.
24. Words painted are different than words in a book.
25. Record my hand kniting and then draw them in repeat. ***
26. Every move I make will add up to the meaning. ***
27. Build my cabinet and project weed growing in the back of it.
28. Redraw my house floor plans from memory, make a metal structure scale size and color the rooms.
29. make short writings that are drawings of what I see as art. ***
30. Collaborative long distance project with josh. i will send him something and he will return it. ***
31. Collabrative project with mom, interviewing her about myself.
32. weaving something with the new lays that i have acquired.
33. Start a dream journal.
34. Get STARTED TONIGHT.

Because of 34 i must go. but i will finish the 100 by the end of the week along with other interesting posts, maybe even from my phone.

I am going to re-read these ideas and * the ones i want to do this week.