Bio:
Dylan Loftis is a craftsman, illustrator, and storyteller. More recently, he’s been working as a high school art teacher. He graduated from Tennessee Technological University in Spring 2015 with a BFA in Woodworking and Furniture Design. He then went to Virginia Commonwealth University. where he graduated in Spring 2019 with a MFA in Craft/Material Studies.
Artist Statement:
My work is a noticing and a return - a good old-fashioned call and response.
An understanding and a becoming.
At present, the noticing is on brokenness and the response on reparation. The work is filtered and guided through my background in traditional woodworking and furniture design.
A lifetime love of comic books, storytelling, and illustration refuses silence, and it escapes in bursts as I work intuitively through design and material. A newly discovered love of writing finds meaning in that intuition.
It’s impossible, even irresponsible, for me to notice and question the brokenness around me without questioning the brokenness within me. It’s cyclical. The noticing becomes self-examination; the response becomes self-discovery.
By leaving my surroundings in a more secure, joyful state than I found them, I am assured of the following:
They have been revived; given the opportunity to thrive once more in my absence.
I am leaving better too.