SAM EDWARDS
| BIO |
Sam Edwards is originally from Detroit Michigan but has called Cincinnati Ohio his home for many years now, and is currently attending the University of Cincinnati in pursuit of a bachelor in fine arts degree. While growing up Edwards never considered pursuing artistic notions and sought out metalworking and welding schools after graduating high school. Going even so far as obtaining his welding certificate he made a sudden shift to attend an art college. Edwards’ art reflects the influence of growing up in a blue-collar community. This is most notably seen in his large-scale sculptures focused on traditional materials and crafting techniques. His focus on function and material before form and color often leads him into new modes of creation, fueling his pursuit of craft.
| ARTIST STATEMENT |
My latest work has been a series of paintings identifying part of my personal mythology. Mythology typically is an explanation for the world around us but I wish to present a “mythology of self” a unique personal mythology as an explanation for the internals of oneself. The goal of this work is to inspire more introspecting thinking and add more fantasy to the world and people around me.
This work is inspired by a common story of two wolves originating from the Lenape, which is a Native American tribe. The story states that there are two wolves that live inside of us, one black and one white. The black one is evil and represents greed, anger, and lies and the white one is good that represents love, empathy, and peace. The story continues that these wolves live inside you and are constantly in battle with each other. Then the story asks a question, which one wins? The answer being the one that you feed. I’m less interested in the morality or life lesson to be gained from this story but rather the idea of non-human representational beings living and existing inside of you.
We all have numerous internal motivators, emotions, goals, and dreams that motivate and inform our actions every day of our lives. Sometimes we even seem to have so little control over these emotions or motives, or no sense of why we have such goals and aspirations. The goal of this work is to give these all forms which can be interacted with as a new form of introspection. If this is difficult to understand let me create an example. I hold within me an extreme competitive drive. That is an internal motivator that impacts many of my decisions. This work gives that internal motivator a shape, a body, a face, and a story. I take internal motivators and paint them into their own mythology, their own worlds, and stories that exist within myself. It allows me to think of the motivators I have inside of me and give them physical forms. I am suggesting that we all have this pantheon of motivating figures inside of us. What do yours look like?