Whereas the artist Dan Nelson understands an artist statement to be a document whose purpose is to a) guide the viewer in her/his perceptual journey through the works, b) reassure the viewer that the work is rooted in firm and acknowledged concepts and is not merely a disparate heap of offhanded and vapid gestures, c) reassure the viewer as to the artist's sincerity and integrity of vision, and to d) neatly package the artist's work into a coherent and apparently premeditated body; I, Dan Nelson, do hereby solemly swear that my works of art are an attempt to skillfully create objects and/or presentations that spring from laborious and exhausting processes, that said works are firmly rooted in concepts commonly acknowledged to be weighty and important, that the concepts dealt with in said works of art are mentally and spiritually toiled upon by the sum total of the artist's faculties, and, although the artist has neither the desire nor the resources, nor does he in fact believe it to be in his ken and purview to guide a viewer through his work, thereby performing the task of the critic, nor to make any claim upon the premeditation of the creation of said body as a neat and seamless totality, nonetheless the artist assures the viewing public that, should that public be drawn to his works by their aesthetic properties, their perceptual labors shall be richly rewarded by contact with experiences that both incorporate and elevate the human condition with, beyond, along, and into the very existence and properties of matter in the universe.