SURFACE LEVEL Artist Statement

My work takes it's cues from Neuro-Linguist Programming a communication model that borrows from behavioral psychology, hypnotism, and transformational grammar among other models of effective communicating. My most recent pieces are multi-sensory sculpture/installation based works that revolve around affecting the future memory of the viewer by creating an intense experience similar to a S.E.E.

An S.E.E. or, Significant Emotional Experience is any major, fully associated, highly charged emotional event wherever it occurs. The S.E.E. has the potential to create or be the source of some emotional, mental or even physical ease or dis-ease occurring in the body (the notion of an SEE came from the sociologist Dr. Morris Massey, in the book The People Puzzle). If an intense enough experience is created then a S.E.E. or reference structure is made. A reference structure is the fullest representation from which other representations within some system are derived.

In considering this, I purposefully use multiple modality affecting modes of communication, or objects and devices that directly affect the five senses such as aromatherapy devices, strobe lights, stereo equipment, candy, lotion bottles, smoke machines and snow machines. These are paired with temporal materials (such as pinecones and packaged food products) and are meld together with hot glue and other forms of fastenings. Using materials that directly affect the senses leads to a more robust and holistic intense full-bodied experience thus giving the viewer a higher possibility of creating a S.E.E. in turn forming a reference structure. This structure of reference will hopefully be strong enough to cause the viewer to remember the artwork sometime in the future when they encounter a similar smell, sight, taste, sound, and/or feeling. So in short, I am working with the affects of materiality on the future memory of the viewer.

By recontextualizing and fusing common pedestrian middle-class objects I reterritorialize and constitute multimedia sculptural/installation systems based on sensory modalities. Objects and machines are collected that stimulate the 5 senses such as aromatherapy devices, strobe lights, stereo equipment, candy, lotion bottles, smoke machines and snow machines. These are paired with temporal organic material (such as pinecones and packaged foodstuffs) and are meld together with hot glue and other forms of fastenings.

In addition, I conduct opening night only performances involving interactions with my work. The nature of the involved objects lends the gestalt of the work a highly interactive quality: motion detective units switch on lights, buttons are pushed to create water based nontoxic smoke clouds, snow machines belch out soap based bubbles of foam, scents such as vanilla and lavender fill the room, buckets of candy are attached to eat, and audio units produce constant beats and rhythms. Video cameras are normally present to document my movements and the crowd's reaction and interaction with the work.

Budd's survival vehicle (Bon Voyage Monstromos De Pileon) is similar in spirit to the environments of Andrea Zittel - both are fantasies of a mobile self-sufficiency that is enormously appealing to people rooted, as we all are, in a complex, settled society. Both have an aura of helplessness, always aware of the impossibility of escape, but longing for it all the same. – Bill Davonport

Richie Budd’s multi-media sculptural objects and installations are impossibly self-contained microenvironments that are hinged together by his skillful use of the glue gun and/or his keen sense of balance and placement. The artist works with the surplus of our materially dependent commerce society reconstituting ephemera into inventive systems. These precarious and multi-faceted systems are based on sensory modalities in which the artist incorporates specific objects-aromatherapy, stereos, foodstuffs, smoke machines-to invoke all of the senses underscoring the ‘nature’ of our lived experience. These compressed, quasi living and breathing systems function on multiple levels both inert and active and seek to cause a dynamic experience for the viewer and in turn a structure of reference. – Jennifer Davy

Budd’s sculptural pieces engage all of the senses. His amalgams of lotions, food, clocks, and other kinetic and consumer materials are embedded into nebulous shapes that both embrace and purge their contents. Connecting and surrounding the tactile, aural, visual, and olfactory elements is the semi-translucent hot-glue, which offers up its half submerged treasures to evoke a visceral experience on the part of the viewer. – Jennifer Jankauskas