Artist Statement
My artwork is an attempt to reconcile my physical surroundings with the fears, fascinations, curiosities, and daydreams occupying my mind. The photographs and constructions consist of common artifacts, materials, and scenes from everyday life, which have been rearranged and reassembled into various forms, patterns, and illustrations. The images aim to examine the distance between where my mind wanders to and the material objects that inspire those fixations. Equally important to this work are the ‘big picture’ and the ‘little things’—the mundane and relatable artifacts of our daily lives, and more mysterious notions of life and existence. This work is about creating order where we expect to find randomness, and also hints that the minutiae all around us is capable of communicating much larger ideas.
Kevin Van Aelst was born in Elmira New York and grew up in central Pennsylvania. He has received a B.A. in psychology from Cornell University and an M.F.A. in photography from the University of Hartford. He has taught photography courses at the Hartford Art School, Middlesex Community College, Quinnipiac University, and currently at the ACES/Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, Connecticut. He is a 2008 recipient of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism fellowship grant. He has been commissioned to create artwork for such publications as Time, Wired, GQ, Business Week, Fast Company, and Scientific American. His photo illustrations appeared weekly as part of The Medium in the New York Times Magazine from 2007 to 2010.
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