Rodney Godek, Pittsburgh Alumni

Rodney Godek

My art making can be derived from a number of sources, yet it has a few factors that ultimately determine its outcome. These factors are experimentation, process, and most importantly, material.

As time passes, new technologies and new ideas are constantly surfacing in my work. A willingness to accept the changes these variables will incur means a willingness to experiment with them. Through the efforts of experimentation, discoveries are made that are both minor and major and I learn from them to continue fostering the growth and evolution of my work.

It is the act of the making, the labor of it, the processes used, that also determine the outcome of my work. Through the intense focus of the processes I use in my work I hope to achieve a complete understanding of the possibilities they have in controlled applications as well as chance occurrences. I want to know what the process can produce, so that I may better prepare myself for the use and manipulation of it later on.

The decision of what to use, and when to use it has always been the key to the creation of my work. I have become so submersed in the materials I use that at times they become more important to me than the object I have created. When I come in contact with the materials, an interaction occurs that becomes something more than just my use and dominance over the material. I strive to allow the material to speak for itself, so that you see and feel the material's presence rather than an illusionistic representation that alludes to something greater than the material itself. To me, there is no greater power.