2019 People's Choice (3D) Winner

Noah James Saunders

I discovered wire the day I made my first wire face. So for me wire and faces are inseparable, like taste to the tongue. I'm not a portrait artist; my work is less about the subject than it is about the very act of creation. I speak only in wire, and faces are my language. But how to explain the longevity of my artistic project now in its twenty eighth year? It's because the reward keeps increasing with every sculpture. Wire, the most innocuous item found in the back of every junk drawer, is a medium with potential that has only barely been tapped. With every new sculpture I'm building on my discoveries from the last sculpture. "Luminous," my latest creation, represents my most honest attempt at taking a thing of no significance, and working it till it moves the viewer. Somehow by humanizing a medium that is so easily discarded, I feel a closer connection to my fellows, as in prayer. I leave the studio with a deep sense of our collective humanity and a profound feeling of optimism.