Paul DeHaven

I come from a background of aerospace engineering where everything must be specified, defined, verified, documented… a wide variety of physical and virtual systems by which everything is controlled to the ‘Nth degree’. This in order to achieve a very specific ‘thing’ with little or no variation.

In the outside world, many things appear to be very much what they seem on the surface but even a slightly closer look reveals that this is not the case. There is variety and variation everywhere one looks. And what seems stable and unmoving is actually in ceaseless motion.

This contrast in how one can consider, or attempt to set order to, the observable world is what set my head and hands to the task of trying to explain myself artistically.

For reasons I am still exploring I concentrate my interests on life in the ocean and the ways I might create representations of the lifeforms therein, in a way expressing my ‘opinion on the matter’.

I do this by taking hard, rigid, materials such as copper, brass, steel, or plastic and by using a variety of techniques, equipment, and tools I heat, bend, cut, pound, file, deform, reform, ablate, perforate and elongate.

I strive to create something that is recognizable yet somewhat unexpected, unexplainable, unimaginable because after all, everything around us was once all these things… and so were we.