Jimmy Descant

Though rocketships have been my specialty for 25 years, I am not just the Rocketman, but a Severe ReConstructivist; now seeking the cool and inspiration of the West, as it’s mountains, people, and cultures past and present - and has inspired my skills. I now see in my found parts, the faces and trials of the Indian as well as the Cowboy, and have been working to turn my talents and art into visions of the mountains and deserts, their people, and my own love of the West, merging the past and future into something astounding to the viewer, and to the Universe. When I started professionally creating assemblage art in 1996, I saw my lifelong appreciation of the beautiful utilitarian parts from the Golden Age of American manufacturing transform into my visions of what they could be, once rearranged... never having heard the term 'ready made' from Duchamp, or seen Picasso's early assemblages. After 15 years in the music business as support road crew (roadie), my foray into sculpture began with a vintage canister vacuum cleaner at a New Orleans flea market, and I transformed it into what the original draftsman dreamed, a Buck Rogers rocketship! At that exact moment, I quit the road life and began my self taught artist life. I grew up being taught how to garage sale by my Mother, finding treasure on the cheap, and have always had a passion for flea markets, trash night, and taking in the unwanted detritus of American consumerism. I often find donations of 'junk' on my porch or yard! Now giving it all new appreciation and life in art... and now in statement. There is no welding in my work. I find parts that have never seen each other that mesh and form my style in a clean professional fit by way of cold connections. My rocketships contain nor depict any form of guns, bullets, or bombs; as they are for the peaceful exploration of time, space, ideas, and cultures. But in my Western art, these tools can be reflectors of American violence and the country's history of expansion, as well as inclusion and exclusion pertaining to Native Americans, and my Native inspired and Western portraits and commentary.