Vow and Foxtrot

A completed project and a work-in-progress:

Trust Me

Trust Me. Cotton string, glue, nails. 2013

{shown installed at Arch Enemy Arts, 109 Arch Street Phila, PA}

Loop Loop Loop

Working with string almost guarantees that you are going to arrive at a more efficient and overall superior way of working after you have made too much progress to come to a halt and start over. The ensuing situation, which may require one to employ wildly different tactics to arrive at the same destination, is personified by increased clarity and frustration. When I use string to make objects, I am relying on the whims of a medium that is defined not only by its physical properties but also by its nearly aqueous tendency to change and thus alter one's process. Seriously, "alchemical media" should be a recognized form of matter.

I consider string to be the basic element of constructed matter, just as Derrida considered the mark to be the basic literary unit, from which everything I make ramifies. A loop is a word, a series of stitches is a sentence, and so forth. Alternately, you can view the string itself as a cell, a series of loops as a system, and a small amount of yardage as tissue. Unlike tissue, however, this material lacks regenerative properties, although at times I almost expect it to, which is probably related to the fact that I'm often fabricating the likenesses of living creatures. Its existence relies on a process based entirely upon proliferation, energy that is put forth by my body. String is a medium defined by its application, and the relationship that it maintains with those who use it.

de Grootvader

Here's my piece for the upcoming Phantom Hand show, The Dead Cats of Civilization, entitled De Grootvader. Great, another piece about grandfathers. It was fun to work on this one. Constructing miniature faux bois floors is a really enjoyable task. I feel like I've said this on several occasions but still, it's a real good time and I would recommend doing it even if it serves no purpose whatsoever. Leaving the edges of my little guys' garments un-hemmed has proven to be a liberating and aesthetic-defining decision...on a personal level, anyway. It's not like there are tons of people looking at my work all the time, praying that I will stop hemming the sleeves of tiny men, but it's nice to feel as though I have some sort of a stylistic alignment to fall into. Also, conventional hemming methods make for bulky attire; things have to correspond with the subjects' diminutive size, otherwise everything gets thrown off. That's all I have to say about that.

Why is the title in Dutch? I don't know.

Supersymmetry III

The people at InLiquid were kind enough to let me display this chair, entitled Supersymmetry III, amongst countless works by formidable artists at Benefit v. Thirteen a few Fridays ago. I was shocked to learn that muralist Meg Saligman had purchased the piece, with the intent of making arrangements to have it installed in her home. The installation occurred just this week; I'm still coming to terms with the idea that someone would enjoy my work enough to put it in their home. 

The area where the piece is situated, its resting place after being installed in two other spaces, is a beautiful transitional area embellished with crown molding. The network of strings in which the chair is suspended appears to dissolve into the bone-colored walls, and multiple light sources cause the object to bear a peculiar shadow that stretches and distorts itself in the space defined by the planes of the corner.

It also has other chairs with varying properties to converse with.

{This object is a replica of the last thing my grandfather worked on in his wood shop prior to his death. It is the molted skin of a memory that I forced myself to create, an imagined vision of the actions that took place in my absence as the chair was given new life. Perhaps the chair is also an enlarged representation of the tissue one might examine under a microscope if loss were an organism, which had just been subjected to a biopsy.}

This construction of this piece was tumultuous endeavor, and I feel as though the resentment that I had towards the piece (or myself, for making bad decisions and refusing to sleep), sort of distorted its significance after a while. Now that it has exited my life, the desire to reflect upon its origins has a rejuvenated appeal.