Justin is a sculptor, cartoonist, and designer born in Minnesota and raised in Colorado. He discovered a love of sculpture halfway through his three-year career as a graphic design major at Gordon College and graduated with a BA in both sculpture and design. Most notably, Justin was one of over 30 artists to work on Natura Obscura, an immersive installation at the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Englewood, and he was a Young-Artist-in-Residence at the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skælskør, Denmark. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He now lives with his wife in Beverly, Massachusetts.
“My work draws on a wide variety of influences, from Baroque and Rococo sculpture to contemporary cartoons and science fiction. My childhood fascination with creatures both real and imaginary has evolved and matured as I have, eventually merging with a more formal education in art and art history to create universes teeming with whimsical, alien organisms. Behind all of these lifeforms is a fascination with the bizarre, the things we can never quite understand or describe. At their core is a tension between the familiar and the foreign, the figurative and the abstract, the animate and the inanimate. I want viewers to grapple with these tensions, finding humor in the ‘life’ these organisms appear to have while being taken aback or even unsettled by their strange forms.
