“I Don’t Want your millions (Billions) mister”
I believe that work and workers produce art. The pieces I am presenting as art were mainly fabricated in worker training centers, often wholly unrecognized as art by the viewer or even by the producer. I mean for them to be conceptual entryways for the viewer to consider the working class, as a class, with deep meaning and talent. To be sure, these pieces are my interpretation, influenced by art history, contemporary art practice, and my personal politics. Yet they could not exist without the underlying work and efforts of our crafts people. Pieces in the show are vignettes - only some of many.
The core of “I Don’t Want Your Millions (Billions) Mister” is based on photos I took at UBC Training Centers, from the millwright local in Tampa, Florida to the scaffolding center in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and many locations in between. In addition, I photographed an Ironworker Center in Little Rock and the center of Local 32BJ in New York City. A number of pieces in the show come directly from schools which train the next generation of craftspeople, including from an indigenous training center in the Toronto area.
The largest piece in the show is a sculpture which I designed based on an architectural plan of a Soviet-Ukrainian artist Vladimir Tatlin, entitled “Workers’ Staircase.’’ With the help of UBC Canada training instructors, the sculpture was built by apprentices from UBC Local 18 in Hamilton, Ontario.
Photographs on view in “I Don’t Want Your Millions (Billions) Mister”, 2026