artist's statement

My artwork strives to promote connectivity between human beings. I implement and build with material and signal, solid and ephemeral: wood, light, twine, blade, circuitry, latex, heartbeat, myself. I use these materials to create safe spaces where my true art material is found: the human connection that occurs in the course of open exchange.

I create temporary, intimate, and inviting spaces, yet tension is deeply rooted in my work. Materials exist in conflict, structures are held together by their own weight. Whether manifested in ritual, in meditative knot tying, or visualizing shared heartbeat and breath, the experience of my artwork is one that casts new light on interaction, what it means to coexist, what it means to discover equilibrium in the presence of opposition and tension. These spaces reveal and make accessible the human network that exists in myriad forms.

As conscious beings, we are fully aware of ourselves, but we have less awareness of complex systems that our combined mental capacities comprise. These larger complex systems have no inherent value - they simply exist - but our awareness or lack thereof allows us to engage and direct this larger social organism or simply exist within it as pieces ungrounded in a self-propagating reality.

Ultimately, my goal in casting light on the spaces between people is to enhance the innate connections that we already possess and allow humans to direct, experience, and simply gain pleasure from being part of this larger social organism. This is not to examine simply the identity, existence or spirituality of one soul, but the interconnected knowledge and purpose that exists in the connections between many.

Michael LaHood recently received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and Media from Columbia College Chicago. You can email him here.