My work centers around a sculptural consideration of surfaces and the histories contained within their layers. In my studies I learned of the importance of surface, both for artisan and historian, as a record of actions, interactions, environment and origin. At the same time, through my love of architecture, I had realized that it is most often the surface – or rather the skin – of the building that changes as new styles develop, so the architectural surface reveals much about the cultural background of the structure. Following this logic, I investigate the interaction of personal histories with the physical traces they leave on surfaces, touching upon subjects ranging from urban planning and social architectures, to political and environmental crises. Employing materials such as liquid latex, plastic, construction materials, and rudimentary electronics, I design object-making processes and performative systems that expose the effects of time on our bodies and environments.
The method I most frequently employ is to apply liquid latex, mixed with pigment, in many thin layers to the surface of architecture or human skin. Once the latex has dried, I peel off the fabric-like replica of my subject's surface, which now incorporates and exposes the imperfections, scars, layers of paint and detritus that build up over time. Although this technique can create different aesthetic outcomes, my interest lies more in the simplicity of the basic technique: it is straightforward enough to be taught to a large number of individuals in a short period of time, allowing me to involve others in the art-making process. This democratic access to the art-making process is key in my mind to moving art beyond the secluded space of the gallery and into a meaningful conversation with the public at large. It is in the interests of addressing broader audiences that I often work with non-art community groups and activists including PUSH Buffalo, Buffalo ReUse, Common Ground (New Orleans), and Acorn. By inviting the communities involved in these organizations, along with artists and art enthusiasts, to participate in works like the Social Dress series or Hand Made Communication, the latex casting process becomes a means of facilitating conversations between individuals who otherwise may have no opportunity to get to know each other.
It is these interactions that constitute the core of my community-based work. Social Dress New Orleans – 730 days after was more than simply a monument to the slow pace of progress in New Orleans’ renewal. It was also, as so many residents stopped by to point out, a positive act of construction in an area plagued by destruction, and open to anyone who wished to participate. It was a meeting point for those ready to tell their stories, some of which were recorded in my blog and a documentary I commissioned from filmmaker Ambarish Manepalli. In Social Dress Buffalo: The Past Reflecting the Future, I invited local architecture and urban planning students to assist with the work, bringing this next generation of city planners into the neighborhoods likely to be most affected by their work. The students were told to cast the abandoned buildings in these areas, but the focus of the project was on the naturally occurring interactions they would have with these communities as curious neighbors came by to question the students, often leading to more in-depth conversation about what life is like in these neighborhoods. By focusing on on-site art-making rather than direct community intervention, the project sought to avoid the social hierarchies inherent to more traditional volunteer work, and open up the space for a more constructive and personal conversation, with the completed sculptural dome intended as a potential meeting space to continue these conversations. In both works the completed sculpture stands as an indirect record of these interactions at the same time that it symbolizes the histories with which these communities are grappling. In this manner I explore alternative readings of history, not as a grand narrative, but as a fractured record documented physically through the thousands of traces that surround us.
More recently I have begun a series of studio-based works that build off of my interests in personal histories and the structure of urban space. These pieces, taking the form of drawings, sculptures, and installations that include the Metabolic series, are influenced by my day job as a network technician and seek to explore the nature of physicality by examining the infrastructures that support both the real and virtual interactions that make up contemporary urban experience. Shifting my concern with fractured histories to fractured systems, these works combine two- and three-dimensional media (latex skins, wire, mirrored acrylic, and pen on paper) to consider the tenuous, shifting, seemingly organic structures of urban space (including architecture, transportation infrastructure and telecommunications networks) that run counter to its idealization as a place of rational order. At the same time, like my other works, they continue the investigation of the complex interaction of architectural, material and social histories, but through an abstract consideration of the systems that shape social encounters.
Social Dress St. Louis – Learning and Unlearning, 2011
Workshop at Northside Workshop
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Social Dress St. Louis – Learning and Unlearning, 2011
latex, acrylic paint, cheesecloth
size varies
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Social Dress St. Louis – Learning and Unlearning, 2011
latex, acrylic paint, cheesecloth
size varies
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
