Derek Chalfant

2021 Artist Statement by Professor Derek Chalfant

The creative work I produce is developed through fabricating (metal, wood, appropriated) objects and casting (bronze, aluminum, glass, chocolate, wax, resin) while transforming my ideas and experiences into physical realities.  I have an interest in the orchestration of a variety of materials and search for contrast between the organic and geometric, the abstract and representational, and the raw and refined. Themes, sources, and objects employed in my work range from scientific and historical facts to global contemporary issues. I recurrently forge in layers of meaning that can interconnect to my own personal history, which gives me an ancestral connection.

Many of the forms I create are objects of implied utility, security and protection, which are used as metaphors for our psychological behavior, and for the phenomenology of the body. Architectural furnishing structures like a bed, chair and table, allow me to explore specific polar states that are relevant to the structure and also to the personal psyche such as; large/small, inside/outside, private/public, adult/child, beginning/end, birth/death.  The sculptures and installations fashioned are a means to reflect poignant elements of our society.  Part of the narrative in my pieces has to do with the human condition. In particular today’s elderly and youth, as well as our social and environmental conditions. Years of Living Dangerously (yearsoflivingdangerously.com) and other historically significant situations we are face as a global society have inspired some of my recent research. I continue to exhibit my work in a larger public setting.

Photographic and drawn images are continuously being generated and are integral to my research and creative process. These two-dimensional forms of communication are often thresholds to my sculptural work and installations. To the viewer, I hope to engage and reflect my inquiries and interests related to the human spirit and sensitivity toward all life forms.  I desire for my sculptural work to be thought-provoking as a richness of meaning with the ambiguities, enigmas, multiple layers and conflation's of both form and content.  Ultimately, I am responding to some my interests (and those of others) research, emotions and environment while questioning, and examining, the world in which we live.

I embrace hybridity in an expanding field of theory and practice, and am actively engaged in investigations of technologies that augment and influence contemporary print media. Some of my creative practice reflects the ability to work within an interdisciplinary approach that blends traditional processes with new media and digital augmentation. These practices may include, but are not limited to: multiples, photography, performance, sculpture, installation and digital fabrication.