Artists Statement

“I remember being five years old and looking at the fossils in my backyard. At that age I was convinced I would find a dinosaur. But what captured my imagination was that I was literally holding a chunk of life millions of years old. I wondered, “What more than a speck of fossil could I possibly hope to produce in my short life when viewed from 40 million years in the future?” Maybe it’s ironic then, that I live in a time when humans will make such a huge impact, both biologic and geologic.

“I believe our perception is profoundly and relentlessly impacted by mass media, and as a result our experience becomes ever more symbolic, iconographic, and virtualized. Humans no longer determine value without symbols, and more disturbingly, we rarely experience our senses directly without our conditioning getting in the way. Our food and almost every other aspect of our lives is not experienced, but consumed as a commodity. Its value is determined not by ripeness, freshness or wholesomeness, but implied by a familiar brand, color or shape. My art attempts to once again engage the viewer’s primary senses, if only for a moment, by appealing to the hunter-gatherer still in all of us and forcing the question, “Is it good?”

Scott makes sculpture, pottery, and custom tile at his Santa Barbara studio. An area resident since 1976, he has worked in clay for almost 20 years. He has taught workshops at the Mendocino Art Center, Hui No’Eau Visual Arts Center, and Black Mountain Center for the Arts, and he has studied and collaborated with other artists at the Archie Bray Foundation, and at Penland, Haystack, and Arrowmont Schools of Craft. He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at San Diego. He also enjoys gardening, cooking, surfing, and raising chickens.