Michael Cannata

My art explores what it is like to be a physically and mentally hyperactive individual by investigating movement and stillness. Studying sensations and emotions through making, meditating, skateboarding and dancing. These activities give me a sense of reprieve from the busyness of my obsessive thoughts. Adrenaline inducing activities like skateboarding slow time and focus me, telling my mind and body that what is happening in the moment is important, that I am alive.

When I am in dull situations my mind feels still, I find stimulation and relief by drawing my daydreams. Often times my drawings also evolve into daydreams; I see daydreams as drawings in the mind’s eye. Observations of my own mind and body sensations bring me to the present. I seek to share my experiences to the benefit of people with similar qualities.

The activity of dance lets the body speak to a different consciousness. A spoken word seems to degrade the experience of an improvisational contact dance with another person. Moments of stillness in meditation may be the opposite of adrenaline inducing, however they supply similar awareness of sensations and emotions of body and mind. The toggling between stillness and stir activates my attentional awareness creating a serene state to process and think.

My work can be seen as a cacophony of disparate images, materials and scale references intertwined and tumbled together. Figurative elements come out of blob-like forms that suggest body movement and emotion, and coil-built elements represent thought patterns. I play with translating and intertwining two-dimensional and three-dimensional pains of drawing. I investigate variable consistencies of wax, glass, metal and clay; how their soft, crunchy, fluid and sharp states influence how I make. Inventive construction, and exploration through materiality is how I express my ideas and give emotional qualities to my work.