Shane Wiggs
Art is the only thing I wanted to do going back to childhood. My mother was an artist when I was young and I was drawn to creation since then. My journey as an adult took me through 4 colleges and a technical school. I've taught high school art for 19 years and have exhibited my work since the late 1980s. Although I primarily work in drawing, painting, and printmaking, I've done digital art, steel sculpture, holography, and performance art. Art history, genocide studies, and the Christian Western tradition have greatly influenced my aesthetic and approach to artmaking.
Artist Statement
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” – C. S. Lewis
Entropy in our world has become a primary concern in my work. First, I find beauty and pathos in the decaying works of man; specifically in aging agricultural/industrial architecture and facilities. In its prime, makeshift functional architecture possesses an imposing, almost brutal presence. Echoes of the lives of those who built and depended on these once-thriving complexes drift through the air. Neglected, these sites point to problems of temporality and mortality inherited by subsequent generations. They also recall specifically American problems; the export of jobs to other countries, economic drought, declining work ethic… broken dreams. Despite the temptation to take a negative view of these weighty matters, I have an ineffable attraction to these abandoned, rusted, and sagging structures. They haunt me. They are an analog to the fallen state of man, his hopes, and the suffering inherent in life. Precisionism and Magic realism via Charles Scheeler and George Tooker respectively are influential here.
These physical signs of decline lead me to a personal reckoning. Observing our times I see moral degradation, hyper-politicization, a lack of shared culture, the celebration of licentiousness, an imposition of sexual degeneracy on children, escalating crime, and record levels of violence. This reckoning came in the form of a return to beauty in my own art; focusing on family and confronting fears. It seemed the only rational response to an irrational world. These more human pieces share symbols of transformative growth; butterflies are hopeful and aspirational. Images of moths catalog a change into our worst, most unrecognizable selves… irrational and unhinged. Warnings of mortal danger undergird these works as storms and beautiful, poisonous plants. Redemption and hope appear as family, love or just a trace of human beauty. Although Symbolism is mined for these works, I owe a debt to Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. Kiefer for his documentation of the cyclical nature of evil in human culture and Richter because of his return to the family during trying times.
Return, reckoning and entropy lead to perhaps most traditional series of works – Christian symbols. Although these symbols have been used for centuries, I was encouraged to proceed in this vein by the preceding C.S. Lewis quote. These prints represent a direct application of my faith and a modest attempt to restore the truth and beauty once inherent in artistic endeavor. Jesus’ redemption of fallen creation in biblical prophecy fulfills a longing inexpressible in words and beyond the images themselves. Symbols of faith give me hope - a feeling I wish to impart to anyone viewing my work.