Your figures are amazingly lifelike yet have a certain statuesque quality. I call them sculptures rather than statues. I think of a statue as something that has been put up for political reasons or to commemorate something that happened. These are more artistic expressions of common situations. My street pieces can be a fellow on a cell phone. They say, ‘This could be you, this could be that fellow across the way there.’
Why do you select everyday scenes for your works? I like seeing what people do and give them back what they are and what they do, so they can see themselves or see their friends. I have people doing ordinary things and try to put them in the settings where they would do those things.
Don’t passerby sometimes confuse the sculptures for real people? There is a double-take aspect to it. Some people are really not sure for a moment whether it is a person or a sculpture. You have a little bit of fun when people tiptoe past somebody if they think they’re asleep, when they’re really giving all that deference to a sculpture. It makes people smile and gives them a relationship to the work. The art is in the interaction between the piece and the viewer.
Why do you do realism in an age of abstract art? What I’m trying to do is not make art an elitist experience. I appreciate a lot of abstract art, but a lot of it has come to be meaningful to the artist and not the average viewer. My work doesn’t have to be explained to anybody.
You’re an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. How does that inform your art? It has nothing to do with my art. It isn’t what makes me ‘me.’ I love people, I love relating to them. I don’t like being around people who are in clubs, people who are exclusive, people who are boring-who don’t do things. I know a lot of rich people who are very uninteresting. If being an heir is all that’s interesting about you, then you’re not interesting.
