"Strike!" Mixed Media, 2007

The sport of fastpitch softball has been a part of my life for seventeen years.  I have pitched for the last ten years of my life, spending countless hours practicing or playing in games.  I wanted to create a sculpture project that incorporated my life as athlete and artist.

I wanted to experiment with ways that I could use movement and force to create a second and separate work of art.  I created a strike zone of glass vials filled with paint the color of an official college softball.  I used eleven balls and pitched at the strike zone from the regulation 43" distance using a fastball, change up, drop ball, rise ball, and screw ball.  The impact of the softball shattered the vials and spilled paint on the black canvas.  Everything that landed on the canvas (glass, paint, grass, chalk) became part of the painting.  The finished painting is merely evidence, the result of a cause and effect situation.  The piece was meant to be a sculptural performance piece that incorporated ideas of movement, collision, repetition, mechanical motion, and the idea that after ten years, no two of my pitches have ever been exactly the same.