The Search for Avalon
John Erwin Dillard, MFA 2024, Glass
My studio is like a place in the book of Deuteronomy. It is the site of my covenant with a higher power which motivates and guides me in my work. It is where I confess my identity and loyalty to humankind. In which my studio becomes a space of continual and unfolding conflict.
The primary material of my work being violence. Violence is the true material of sculpture. Divine violence, that with which we destroy the world, destroy ourselves. It is a violence to subdue a greater evil. In this destruction we may set the stage for the sacred to take the main stage in the world.
In the year I worked on "The Search for Avalon" this was revealed to me. The Avalon was my beacon. It became a representation for my desire to live. The work emerged as the manifestation of my dreams to live in generosity. It is my monument to queer love. My love for the world, my collaborators, students, mentors, friends and family.
"The Search for Avalon" Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
The Search for Avalon Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
"The Search for Avalon" Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024
The Search for Avalon Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
The Search for Avalon Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
"The Search for Avalon" Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
The Search for Avalon Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
The Search for Avalon Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
The Search for Avalon Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
The Search for Avalon Glass, wood, steel, hydrocal resin, and adhesive 2024 Photo Credit: Neighboring States
John Erwin Dillard
John Erwin Dillard (BFA,MFA) B. Gulfport, MS, USA 1995. Exhibiting nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (20') and Prive NYC (23'). Participating in residencies at Penland School of Craft, and George Enescu University of the Arts among others. Citing sculpture as “ ...a site where magic, technology, spirituality and science are merged to imagine new expectations of reality.
Sculpture is one’s own imaginative vision, so powerful, meaningful, that it punctures reality and proliferates into the world. In a physics all our own, sculpture is a testament to the creative force of human beings. Through collective intelligence, science, and vision a new form of life is manifested. By imbuing non-living matter with our own life force it becomes neither living nor-non living.
Sculpture is a tempest, a cyclone, or a hurricane. The enormity of life is no comparison to the possibilities of art. Our vagrancies in love and trespasses against one another are only a microcosm. The son, an heir to a cattle farm, but born to turn on the pole. These simple perversions fail to represent the grand devastation that is living."
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Website: johndillardprojects.com
Email: johndillardprojects@gmail.com