Air Guitar
Welded steel, stainless steel
17’ x 12’ x 3’ feet
$30,000
Mike Roig
Carrboro, NC
“I’ve been making art since I was small, it’s what I came in hard-wired to do. Working in steel satisfies me in a way no other medium has. It is tough and durable, yet malleable, and open to infinite suggestion. It is heavy and obdurate, and yet can be made to express delicate movements of balance and grace. It can appear earthen and solid, or be polished to light-refracting brilliance. I don’t often sketch ideas in advance: the bars, angles, torch, and welder are my drawing tools. All I need is a hook, some notion of an interesting direction to explore and I begin.
Air Guitar’s hook was to give the wind an instrument to play. This was my first effort at an Aeolian harp and I’d about decided it hadn’t worked until an installation in Fayetteville last year gave it the kind of open, wind-swept setting where it could sing the ethereal song it is capable of. Yet even in its silent state it embodies for me the kind of quixotic quest that making original art entails. You have to be willing to embark with no promise of safe harbor, only the hope of new experiences and worthy challenges. An artist friend once told me that it’s very hard to make something original. The only way I know to attempt that is to aim beyond what I know, trust in my powers of invention, and answer the questions that arise guided by the idea that the most interesting solution is the right one. Air Guitar is the product of one of my more interesting journeys.”
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