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The history of corn and the history of the US are inseparable. From Thanksgiving tails of Squanto teaching the Pilgrims to grow it, to government controls born out of the great depression, to the industrial farming that insures that corn byproducts are in everything we consume, we are corn. Mark Twain once said, “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” Twain’s sentiment seems consistent with the current 11 percent approval rating. ‘Cornography’ represents the bloated presence that both corn and politics have in our daily lives and not unlike the Mona Lisa, the eyes in this portrait seem to follow the viewer’s every move as the smiles defy logic.

is a gouache painting simulating a pixelated version, painted on an actual dollar bill obscuring one side of the engraving. The money is out of focus, possibly disappearing before our very eyes...This piece was made for "Trade O Mat" installed in the Columbus Museum of Art, a cabinet of curiosity that is intended to foster a bartering relationships between the viewer and the artist. In this case the viewer is bartering for real money

A sculpture (in progress) designed to float on the Scioto River adjacent to the North Bank Park. The sculpture consists of 7 cows and 1 bull grazing on the river. The image is to appear as a three dimensional line drawing, a phantom image or the essence of a small herd, both reminiscent of the farm culture that surrounded Columbus and for the most part has disappeared and a drawing convention that is intentionally loose and abstract. The metaphorical power of the river and the herd’s displacement will provide an absurd yet reflective view of our relationship to the recent past. In the 21rst century, local farming will become increasingly desirable and yet less and less likely, making the identity of "Cow Town" an disturbing dilemma.

a floating pile of skulls conceived during the 2008 GOP convention, when the media declared the demise of the Republican Party, this is the 4th version, new balloons are attached to the bottom each time. As the balloons contract the sharpie marker drawing turns to powder, darkening the latex surface. My breath is both the solution and the problem for the lifespan of the piece. For their part, the GOP seems to endlessly justify the comically fatal outlook of this exhausted pile.

was made over the course of a year in which I was recovering from Chemo, radiation and lung surgery. The title stems from listening to the archives of the Radio program during my daily ritual of painting. The twelve panels symbolize the twelve months when I relied on other narratives for distraction and the painting process for consistency. This enterprise became a method to regain both mental and physical dexterity while my body regain its chemical balance. Time became the subject. The resulting image, although not literal, could be construed as a representation of my bodies internal battle.

is a smiley face. Optimism took a beating in the first decade of the 21rst century. This version is sinking below the floor with distorted features made of re-purposed materials securing the corner of the gallery. Appropriated affirmations cover old paint cans riddled with nails resembling the rotten teeth of the amplified smile/barrier. One eye has been poked, while the language of the affirmations are desperately proclaiming a bright future.

documents a frozen moment of the collapse of a decade of Artforum magazines. A stack of art magazines with two identical heads of Jesus on top, had fallen and were sprawled across my office floor. The heads are the type that are made so that Jesus's gaze follows your movement a wonderful illusion that happens between the concaved form and the play of light and shadow. Each head broke into pieces, only one could be successfully reassembled. The mess in my office that day conflated the worlds of High art and religious kitsch, echoing my disillusionment and admiration for both.

is self explanatory if you watch CSPAN for any length of time. . The Clowns act like a condemning body (disembodied) that scornfully gaze with drunken demeanor and condemnation. The portraits are scratched into the backside of each bottle. The water amplifies the image while the continuously rounded surface both distort and animate, as you navigate the tenuously balanced warped table/smile, the committee's gaze comes to life, following your motion, Hillbilly magic!

is a combination of drawing, sewing, laminating and collage and it represents the internal battle between the skeletal system and it’s muscles. Self-loathing as anatomical illustration of a gang fight, each gang has a leader, the muscle men leader rides a bull made of internal organs and the skeleton rides a skeletal horse. The source of the collage material is amplified in scale and inserted into the bodies with an acceptable logic.

is based on “The 48 laws of power” by Robert Greene, a Machiavellian collection of concepts designed to control and manipulate people from the top down. The books premise epitomizes the state of our current political and corporate culture; It's not difficult to imagine that every CEO and Politician has taken the content to heart. Using press type and quill pens I created a family tree/ladder of success with all the limbs chopped off.

represents the overstated doom of the turn of the Century. The giant stylized eye with constricted pupil, garish skin tones, colorless eyeball and sharply pointed eyelashes stares blankly to a single spotlight. Constricted pupils can result from too much light, anger or fear or being under the influence of opiates. The disparity in proportion between the revolving sphere and the frozen stare mimics the media’s obsession and weird vibe that lead up to the world partying like it was 1999.

is made through the act of whittling away at a standard plastic toy soldier. The The low quality of the plastic and relatively thin forms made the process challenging. The resulting image is both obvious and to the point. In most cases my work deals with content that seems too familiar, this piece might be the most succinct at addressing the obvious.

is made up of a conglomeration of Christian holiday figures represented in plastic. All are painted black and treated like a magnified scratchboard. Each hand has its optimum viewpoint (separate sides); the hands are graphic images that traverse the topography of the forms, distorting as you circumvent the piece. The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing so to speak, as both make a posthumous plea.

is made out of small dots using several types of markers, the marks have bled in different ways by their reaction to the top coating of epoxy varnish. A Homage to the accidental beauty of the bleeding felt tip marker and a black and white bastardization of pointillism.

is made up of forty-two portraits rendered in human hair stuck in the adhesive of packing tape. Layers of tape articulate the Ovals that pay tribute to the tradition of formal and official portraiture. Each Portrait is larger than life; the warmth of the mostly brown and black hair simulates the charm of old fashion engravings. The piece floats in mid air three feet out from the wall allowing for reflected light from the wall to illuminate each face. The piece blends fond feelings for antiquity with a visceral repulsion for hair as an image-maker. The more modern the man the less appropriate his likeness seems to conform to this format, aside from their banality they smile too much.

is a drawing that is made of hundreds of hand-drawn human skulls that have their eye sockets cutout to reveal the light and shadow on the wall. The form is suspended off the wall by rusted metal posts and the paper is random sizes that have been oiled, the skulls are independently varnished, which separates them subtly from the surface. The center acts as a perverse flower, a single skull surrounded by a circle of skulls like petals that originate the prevailing march that occurs throughout. The light pattern created on the wall is both ghostly and structured like language that can't be read. The frail but incendiary image acts both as a wicked memorial and reminder that the depraved linage of ethnic cleansing appears continuous.

is made of fourteen-gauge wire fence material, suspended in mid air like a puppet. It is a one hundred foot tall anatomically correct human skeleton. Each bone is made separately they're all topographic and hollow, a skeletal version of a skeleton. It was originally installed lying on it’s back trying to escape the confines of the Springfield Museum of Art and now looms over children in our local center of science and industry. COSI is an adapted building of both the old Central High School and new architecture. My dad, Hans Rietenbach was the art teacher for Central High, their mascot was the pirates, which included the expected skull and cross-bones. The position of Gigantic is such that he moving from the old space into the new,as if a ghostly memory from the buildings past haunts the second floor.

is an epic battle scene that in its entirety is fourteen-feet wide. This battle was inspired by the stick figure drawings of all three of my sons, each of them at a curious moment in their lives created fantastic landscapes of violence, I can remember doing the same. My approach replaces the stick figures with a more elaborate anatomical version and limits the weaponry to swords.This piece is about the perpetual and futile nature of war and the tenuous nature of love, using the scrolls structure to suggest continuation; the skeletons come in reluctantly from each side and become increasingly more aggressive towards the carnage filled center. The image is drawn on the backside of translucent vellum and backed with white paint the only information on the front face is the gauche environment and the white teeth. Throughout this posthumous battle hearts glow or bleed inside the naked ribs perhaps suggesting a sardonic optimism that love never dies.

“Headlessness” is a satirical homage to the annoying tradition of truncated sculptures. It is made of an inflatable snowman with his head and hands cut off. The snowman is painted black to revel a cartoon skeleton primitively painted on the surface. The figure is attached to a traditional base and the fan is connected to a timer that turns it on and off in ten minute intervals. The snowman is connected to a string, runs through a pulley attached to the ceiling and is connected to a hammer that acts as a counter weight. When the snowman inflates the hammer is just enough weight to lift the snowman into space, as the snowman deflates it slumps over the base as the hammer drops.

pays homage to commemorative plates, decoupage, sad clowns and the lost art of flocking. From G.W. to G.W. all the presidents are represented in the form of a large phallus. This piece was made before during and after both of the most recent party conventions. Each paper plate was dipped in varnish, suspended with thread and collaged with the image of each president altered to appear as the same sad clown.

is a painting that was made as a response to the malaise and paranoid climate that created by the Homeland security color-coded emergency terror alert system. I combined the three most urgent colors with depictions of the disembodied heads of action figures from my childhood, characters that were based off TV archetypes representing the cultural priorities of that time. The non-responsive nature of their painted eyes represents the emptiness of that system. The portraits are painted with gloss rust-o-ileum and the glowing fluorescent colors are flat spray paint.

is a heart made of one hundred human skeletons suspended on the wall, connected by fish line guided through a system of eyehooks and activated by fourteen turntables connected to two motion detectors. As a viewer approaches the piece the heart beats as each skeleton begins to dance like a clogging doll, the movement is brief as the heart arrests after four seconds. As the viewer moves the cycle begins again, as the turntables rotate they create a sound that is rhythmic and correlates with the hearts movement. The sound track to “Cabaret” is the only record on a turntable; a needle-less arm scrapes its surface creating an amplified noise. The figures dance at the top and are being dragged down at the bottom where cardboard coffins await their arrival.

is made of thousands of pieces of wire inserted into a one-inch grid of holes drilled into the wall, in the shape of a cross. The wires are random lengths and installed as if they were growing out from the wall. The wire becomes the attachment for hundreds of light fixtures, which make up the body. The body is made up of flicker bulbs, which have movement that simulates fire. The accumulative effect of the pulsating light is a nervous energy with a warm glow. A circulatory system; with the blood of Christ on fire.