JEFF MANN

Country:

Canada

City:

FORT ERIE

(I'm not quite sure what story you're looking for so...) I work by response and seek to emulate children's art--letting emotions and subjective responses dominate. When I start work on a piece, I have no idea where it will end up. Typically, I use a car part (because I think therre are too many cars in the world) and expand on the feeling/dance/pattern that is intrinsic to the piece by manipulation and addition of other or identical parts.

The images submitted represent the most recent diretions my work has taken. I make masks (mostly from car parts) conbine them with a skeleton and either take pictures of these figures on backgrounds I have constructed or out in the world around me. SMOG AND MOUDIT'S WORLD were shot at an abandoned former warehouse parking lot. AUTISM is shot with a portion of one of my sculptures, PETRO-CANYOUN as background. CELESTIAL is a mask made of transmission parts, a skeleton made of various car parts including flattened windshield wiper components shot an old industrial building's doors. SOMETIMES... is shot on a sculpture made from segments of a culvert with aluminum engine and exhaust parts fitter to it.

In my imediate family, I have suffered suicide and murder. As bad as that is, the physical and mental abuse I dealt with before those events were far worse. Because of tha chronic trauma of my childhood, I suffered from low self esteem which led to addiction.

Instagram:

https://www.artjobs.com/STARTED

I shot this photograph at an abandoned warehouse. The wall beside the loading dock provided an excellent background for the combination of the mask, MOUDIT, and the skeleton I chose to accompany this mask. To me, M0UDIT is a little lost in the murky world

Here, the mask HOPPER is shot against part of my sculpture, PETRO-CANYON. I felt the structure of the image was strong and is emphasized by eliminating colour from the work. HOPPER has a bit of a "deer in the headlights" feel while behind him are the scintillating patterns and rhythms of his world.

Another piece that I shot in the outside word rather than in my studio. The aged paint on a warehouse door made a great background. LEOPARD is the mask that I used accompanied by a skeleton. both were made of aluminum and steel car parts. CELESTIAL represents that feeling of being a bit removed from the world, not really engaged.

MOUDIT makes another appearance in this photograph. While I was shooting at the abandoned warehouse I concentrated on the concrete wall and the fractured tar of the parking lot (not pictured in this submission) and only when I was packing up did I notice the lamppost bases which had multiple layers of eroded yellow-ish paint on them. MOUDIT is my favourite mask as he is very enigmatic, chameleon-like, kind of channeling my responses. While I feel this piece has more of an environmental message, it also works as a mood piece reflecting how we feel when we're lost in the clouds of our own world.

SOMETIMES i FEEL LIKE... Is a photograph of my sculpture PERSEPOLIS with the mask SNAPPER photographed on it. The placement of the mask emphasizes the sense of being dominated by outside forces. PERSEPOLIS started with a culvert I dug up out of our driveway.