biography

Gene Hracho has been hand-crafting greater-than-human-scale sculptures for more than four decades.  Upon completing his education in the Arts, he made a living as an itinerate set of hands, employed for projects that took advantage of his ability to bend wood and metal to his will.

After adding training in engineering to his formal education, Gene remained itinerant, moving between manufacturing operations, participating in the production of furniture, musical instruments, and troop-carrying helicopters, among many other things.

Gene’s studio practice always parallels his work in the industrial environments, with each activity informing the other.  He’s been driven by aspirations to expand upon a provincial, working-class upbringing by starting engaging conversations (or arguments) through these objects.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My creative practice applies dueling aesthetics, one evocative of the unrestrained imagination of a precocious youth and one representing the disillusionment that inevitably comes to temper it.

My approach to these sculptures seeks to investigate what lies beneath the surface, both literally and figuratively.  Each work offers entries to its interior physical spaces and hints to its origins for viewers who venture that deeply.

The mixed-media constructions appear as relics of questionable undertakings that somehow managed to succeed in spite of the objects’ humble manufacture.  They raise issues of our callous disregard for our sacred planet and all its other inhabitants, presented with an irreverent attitude toward the works’ own pontification.