Justin W. Archer is a sculptor exploring traditional carving practices with fabrication technology to examine the fragility and beauty of the human experience. He received his M.F.A. in 2016 from the University of North Texas and is currently a Professor of Sculpture at SCAD: Atlanta. Archer’s work has been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Day and Night Projects and the Cross-Pollination Art Lab in Atlanta, Love Field Airport, the University of Dallas, the 5th Louisiana Biennial and many other galleries nationally. He has artwork in the public collections of the Promenade de Sculptures in Lacoste, France, the Thompson: Buckhead Hotel, Texas Tech University, the Methodist Health System Foundation and many other private collections. He lives with his family in Atlanta, Georgia.
"My sculptural practice engages emerging technologies and historic wood carving practices to consider paradoxes in the human experience. Rather than viewing technology and craft as oppositional forces, I see this perceived dichotomy as an opportunity. Central to my work are lifesize figures, often hand-carved in Basswood or Walnut. While moments of these figures are carefully realized, digital abstractions and fragmentation express bodies in moments of transformation.
My process explores both machine and hand, utilizing 3D scanning and printing, constructing, hand carving, and precise refining. Using a 3D scanner, I produce a point cloud that records an individual's movements, characteristics, and emotions in a moment. From this digital record, I construct lifesize figures, often following conventions of medieval polychrome sculptures. Constructing, hand carving, and carefully refining details within the figure humanizes the form and becomes a collaboration between the materials, the subject, and the process. Through these processes, I investigate how past and present representations of the figure express not only the material and spiritual realities of our existence, but also our evolving relationship between technology, nature, and the body."