Remy HANEMANN

Boom Go Round
Steel

Throughout my career, the forms of the industrial landscape have intrigued me. Growing up in the southern most part of Louisiana, I was exposed to mammoth oil platforms, Commercial fishing, industrial fabrication facilities, and the people who work there. In the conception of my art, I draw from these images. As an adult I realize that there has always been an underlying intimacy between humans and their machines. Machines, like humans, consume, produce, and waste energy. I try to draw parallels between the two.

I acknowledge and encourage our unique ability to cultivate the imagination. I select previously made components from scrap yards and use them as analogies. The scrap is selected based on their shape, size and texture. These qualities are very important; they hint of an object’s history from the welder’s floor to the scrap pile. I appropriate these omponents and add elements and color.

In the past my work has been life-size, but within the past two years my work has gotten quite smaller. I have learned that to be a fabricator doesn’t mean I have to work large. Metal casting has enabled me to create scrap. I mold a variety of forms from everyday items and cast them in bronze, copper, aluminum, and iron. Mis-casts and defects take on the role of dents, I am creating their history. I assemble these objects by welding and other modes of fastening.

Art making, showing, and teaching are a community event. Just like other aspects of our society, it takes more than one person to complete a goal. People become more like the gears of a machine. Personal interaction through differing psychologies and personal intents mesh to produce several goals.