Damon Hamm

My work is a continuous exploration of the natural world, expressing the abstract concepts of time and motion as physical forms and in a (hopefully) relatable way. Most of my sculptures evolve out of an experiment in transforming one thing into another. I often start with a simple idea like ‘visualize a sound’, then explore various ways it could be expressed — from welding freeform three dimensional ‘paintings’ to capturing digitally, manipulating, and transforming back into an object. For public works, my goal is to make beautiful things with a connection to the cosmos — ancient, universal truths we all share. Each sculpture is inspired by our environment; the movement of people, the stars in the night sky, the shadows cast by the sun over a single day or entire year. Like an alchemist, I use metals as a favorite medium. Metals can bend, scatter, refract and reflect light while also being physically formed, shaped, and textured. Metals interact with the environment physically and perceptually; expressing the ravages of time on a scale different than our bodies, revealing our own impermanence on this planet and the ultimate triumph of entropy.