tower/plug

I've completed my most recent endeavor - a tower of sorts. Earlier this semester, I built a similar sculpture that resulted in a charred studio and headaches for all. After much hesitation, I decided to re-build the piece (though it turned out quite different). This time I built a sturdier inner armature of steel (last time I used cardboard boxes) and eliminated the oil-based polyurethane thought to be the main culprit of the flash fire. This one is a real mash-up of textures and materials. Can you guess what all I used? 

Though it started out as more of a formal/material process driven piece, this sculpture has come to embody a lot of the concepts that have been driving my studio practice over the past few months. I've been reading some stuff by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Georges Battaille - all dealing with kind of kooky psycho-sexual subject matter that could also potentially be read into my work. In this piece, there's definitely an aspect of desire... Rococo in style, cake-like in form - but the allusions to the body/flesh make it equally as yucky (pussy, oozy, etc.). So it exists somewhere in between. Desire and disgust. What interests me most is how these two distinctions don't/can't exist on their own. There's often something kind of disgusting about desire, right? Eating a cake this big would make anyone throw up on the spot. And vice versa... like squeezing a ripe and ready blemish... how something that's extremely disgusting by nature somehow elicits such an odd sense of satisfaction.

Another idea I'm thinking about in this piece is Lacan's theory of "lack" (or "manque" in French), which suggests that desire always arises out of lack.  I've not studied this material in depth, but I like where it is heading and think it's quite relevant in respect to my current body work. There are other things I could try to explain, but I think I'll stop stop here.

Materials include fiberglass insulation (pink and yellow), urethane spray foam ("great stuff"), balloons (white, clear, and pink), hot glue (of varying tones), caulk (of varying tones and textures), landscaping fabric, joint compound, string, water putty, silly string, and more!

This sculpture will spend the summer at Montpelier Art Center for their 31st Annual Invitational Sculpture Exhibition! The show opens on June 7th and will be up through mid-August. 

john baldessari

simply too good not to share...

what happens in my laboratory

Experiments with hot glue... Still not sure how this might possibly manifest in my work, but I sure do like where it's going.

saori moriizumi

www.saorimoriizumi.com

Steve and I stumbled upon the UPenn MFA thesis show last weekend and this was by far my favorite piece. There is something that isn't quite captured in a photograph... the odd mix of materials and attention to detail made it really nice! And you can't beat that blue insulation foam (I have lots of the pink version!)

phoebe washburn

It Makes For My Billionaire Status, 2005
Installation view, Kantor/Feuer Gallery
Los Angeles, CA

 After getting some guff about all my flammable materials and their "home depot recognizability" I've been brainstorming about some new things I might possibly like to use... and what that might look like. Pheobe Washburn comes to mind as someone who really has a way with mixing and mashing up a variety of things to make some super nice installations. I'm a fan.

Compeshitstem, 2009
Installation view, kestnergesellschaft
Hannover, Germany

Poor Man's Lobster, 2005
Installation view, Sculpture Center
Long Island City, NY

statement of sorts

 inside-out & outside-in

flip, invert, convert, converge

I work in the realm of or, a liminal space, an in-between. A blurry place where distinctions collide and coalesce. Where things are almost, but not quite. Perhaps, but not really.

this or that

here or there

him or her

in or out

come or go

organ. origin. orifice.  

Or is a place of comfortable tension, familiar ambiguity, and reluctant desire.

Flesh as metaphor, but tangible still

     a barrier

     a carrier