“My materials are an excess of fuel,” says J. Patrick Walsh, the artist otherwise known as JPW3. “Yet from these materials new meanings form as I use them in experiments continuously relating found, fabricated, and raw elements.” Working in two and three dimensions, JPW3 enacts alchemical transformations that turn thriftstore finds and common objects into art-making mediums. He casts sculptures from melted candles, for instance, using ramps and wheels as the molds, and makes transfer prints from newsprint onto canvas (again activated by hot wax). Walsh has also recently turned to performance, acting on his same material fascinations; in Hot Pot Charmer, he crafted a large tangle of chain and rope, which he periodically lowered from the rafters into a steel pail of molten wax.

Text by Artsy.net