Ronan’s Washing Machine Art began spinning in 2008. He experimented with all kinds and textures of things in the machine. He would stand for hours, using different combinations of colors of objects in the sloshing water.

Toys. Dishes. Flags. Books. Any he could get away with before we stopped him. ;-)> But some gave him extra delight.

These Washing Machine Sculptures perfectly encapsulate Ronan’s aesthetic at the time - and his approach to narrative. Incredibly kinetic and chaotic. Full of color and motion and sound and texture - all things that, on their own, could overwhelm and disturb him.

He is seeing something else when he watches these patterns he is making - living sculptures - and whatever he is seeing is triggering emotion - flushes of endorphins in his brain.

I believe there is narrative here - an emotional structure that Ronan feels. It is a common if subtle theme throughout all his artistic expression over the years. Are these pictures of mind? Of emotional states? Or of a story he is telling inside himself. There is a movie he watches in his head I think - a story of life that is parallel to the one we can see. Ronan is always doing this - seeming to watch the movie of our neurotypical reality beside the movie of his own reality in his head. These two movies intersect but don’t match up…

The non-neurotypical mind understands narrative differently. So I try to imagine the lives of these balloons…