The story behind the Overheads: Early Masks and Form Analysis

In a former life (back in the eighties) when Tj was doing museum reproductions, he molded a series of African faces for an entrepreneur and produced editions of these pieces. In teaching his "Analysis of Form" course he looked at the topic of line use, hidden images, emphasis, and impact from an historic perspective referring to the power of objects in various societies through the ages. He references tribal objects in these materials. These types of phenomena have piqued his intrigue meter for years.

Modern Tribal Experiences

Tj noticed that when a group focuses so much energy on a topic, it becomes akin to worship. Design teams get so absorbed that they may ignore all else to have the most "Tribal Knowledge." Angst and tension mount to an unhealthy level, and then burn-out strikes the design team, and they start questioning the structure of life and their own personal spiritual condition. This Tribal phenomenon exists in the car collector culture as well. (If you have ever seen the restoration fanatics haggle about details of authenticity you've seen it too.) Both antique collectors and luxury car buyers have a palpable worship of these objects that is as strong as primitive cultures had for their iconic objects. Tj became extremely aware of these emotional conditions as he longed to be doing sculpture rather than dealing with his car part tribe. Over a 15 year period Tj collected test samples from overhead projects for luxury cars, which have become his series "the OverHeads." See video of them in the studio!

The first studies were digital photographs of the overhead consoles printed on white and then sketched over top with markers and pens. Tj rescanned and sketched over them again in a computer program. They were printed out again and tiled or assembled to exact life size of the objects to review the designs. A group of these early original studies are available framed with black metal under acrylic.