MEET THE ARTIST
Cecil Carpenter is a multidisciplinary fine artist known for his unique expressive drawings, figurative sculptures, and music. His work explores the complexities of human expression and the weight of time, blending classical fine art foundations with a raw, textural approach.
​
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Cecil earned his BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD) in 2008, where he was awarded the Outstanding Senior in Fine Arts Award. This academic rigor remains the backbone of his contemporary practice. His work has since been showcased in prominent galleries and museums across the United States, including the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky.
​
His creative evolution led him to co-found Autograf, a globally acclaimed electronic music project. As a composer and music producer, Cecil approaches sound as he does sculpture, layering textures and building structural narratives. His music has been featured in major motion pictures and commercial campaigns, and he has performed at over 1,000 shows across 20 countries, including festivals such as Coachella, Lollapalooza, EDC and Ultra.
​
Despite his success in music, Cecil’s journey remains one of dual expression, where the physical rhythm of charcoal, clay, and metal work feeds into his musical compositions. Today, he creates from his studio in Transylvania, Romania, where he continues to explore the depths of human emotion through his work.
INSPIRATION
"An artist would never create an imitation if they could create a reality."
Cecil Carpenter’s creative process is deeply rooted in the Neoplatonic concept of theurgy—an act of 'Divine-working'. For him, art is more than an expression; he believes that to create is to draw closer to divine essence itself.
Through sculpture and drawing, Cecil explores the relationship between creation and the Creator, seeing his work as a bridge to the universal forces that shape existence. His art serves as a meditation on form, emotion, and the spiritual essence that binds humanity to the divine.
While inspired by the philosophical traditions of Proclus, Iamblichus, and Julian, Cecil’s approach is deeply personal. For him, art is not just self-expression—it is a way to seek and reflect the presence of the Creator through the very act of creation. He believes that artistic expression is the purest way to engage with the sacred, the infinite, and the unknown.
To Cecil, creation itself is a divine act, an endless source of inspiration that mirrors the forces that once shaped the world—knowing that, in the moment of making, the Creator must have had similar thoughts.
PHILOSOPHY
"Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue... cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is shadowed... until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine."
— Plotinus, Enneads I.6.9
Cecil Carpenter’s kinetic sculpture, ‘Designed Obsolescence’ (or ‘Sue’), is a physical embodiment of this philosophy. Over the course of nine months of intense labor, he meticulously crafted Sue as part of his senior thesis at Columbus College of Art and Design, engineering it to function for exactly 10 years before ceasing movement—mirroring the finitude of human life.
​
"Death gives meaning to life," Cecil explains. "By giving a statue a predetermined lifespan, I wanted to explore the tension between the ‘immortality’ of sculpture and the inevitability of death. Just as a broken escalator becomes stairs, a broken machine becomes an eternal monument to its own existence. Similarly, our bodies are designed to fail, but in their final moments, they give birth to the immortality of the soul."
​
​Much like Plotinus describes the sculptor chiseling away to reveal hidden beauty, 'Sue' once moved with purpose but now stands frozen, its stillness not a loss, but a transformation into permanence.
