Have you ever gotten lost in a good story? Forgotten what time it was….

Have you ever unknotted a tangled rope? Tracing carefully the origin of each twist.

The artworks I make are like short stories. Or portions of a larger story too long to tell in one brief encounter, sometimes it’s up to you to create the setting, the characters, the conflict, sometimes all the elements are there but in an unfamiliar order.

I’m interested in microbiology. The invisible tapestry of worlds within and around us. The unique geometries of the micro organisms that are hardened into existence by a Centillion short lives. Each life unique but cosmically identical. Water is a the viscus playground for many micro organisms and at 800X times the human eyes ability to see, the drama that unfolds is riddled with molecular complexities we scarcely can imagine.

I studied art in Pittsburgh, and after school spent time working as a carpenter.

I became enthralled in the exactitude of measurements and tricks of great craftsmen and women. Tools and practices that are ancient as the Ziggurats in Thailand, but just as useful today. Finding true Level, plumb, and square, a never ending exercise in extrapolation. At some point the notion of perfection becomes incompatible with the pile of warped wooden studs; that until very recently yearned for sunlight on their own. And yet, with a dedicated understanding of material limitations, and the use of more than a handful of simple machines, incredible feats of architecture emerge from the mud in defiance of gravity.

I am interested in remediation. How the environment heals after human created disasters: BPs oil spill, Exxon Valdez, DDT, Love Canal, Trunoble, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Donora Smog Museum, slag heaps, motor oil, chlorofluorocarbons, methane, fertilizer, The Clean air act.

Events and inventions like these have changed our understanding of ecology. The consequences of toxins in food web is far reaching, the waves of destruction dissipate but not nearly as fast as we’d hoped.

Pollutants have evolved, and so has natures response to them. Fungi and bacteria, plants and bivalves all partake in the detox of the rivers and forests, oceans and cities.

I’ve always been interested in the idea of permanence. Can something really last forever? For millennia stone was the standard of preservation beyond the human lifespan, and thank goodness early humans noticed this, for where would we be without it.

But Is it the stone tablet that lasts forever or spoken language so long as there are people to speak it. Can organic life outlast the warmth of a star? Has it already?

A tennis ball is designed with aerodynamic drag in mind. The countless yellow hairs slow the balls flight. But each year the best players in the world hit harder with newer more powerful rackets and faster courts. My favorite shot in tennis is, the serve, who doesn’t love a good challenge.

Contact at josh.demougeot@gmail.com