The Entropic Mourners (2018)
Dimensions variable
Glassware, Shoe Soles, Found Objects, Driftwood, Wax, Plaster Cast, Spools, Pigment
The Entropic Mourners (An Excerpt)
July 5th, 2018, approximately 6:30 PM on the southwestern bend of the Carquinez Strait, our train struck and killed a trespasser. Alice noticed a tennis shoe lose on the side of the track, continuing her gaze she then spotted the body. The only witnesses who bare the incident are the withered wooden sunken beams outside my window, like a row of mourners in the wake of a tragedy. Time has stood still, it reflects off the water and through the locomotive as through us all.
The Entropic Mourners (2018) is an assemblage installation containing glassware, driftwood, leather shoe soles, and miscellaneous fragments of the early 1900s found on the shoreline of Dead Horse Bay. These remnants are dyed and waxed with my mother's dry pigments and synthesized through a process of wrapping and tangling of my grandmother’s spools of thread. The installation is an interpretation of the wooden beams from my recorded memory from July 8th, 2018, shown above. All the objects and materials assembled, both found and sentimental, were witnesses to their own histories. The Entropic Mourners is thus a witness composed of witnesses.
The Pescatori’s Studio (2019)
Dimensions variable
Multimedia Installation, Assemblage Sculptures, Projection, Italian Roadway Maps, Spools, Shells, Sound
The Pescatori’s Studio (2019) is an installation that guides viewers through the multidimensionality of memory. The installation comprises 2D, 3D, 4D and sound elements that all serve in remembering my grandmother and our shared connection to Italy. I spent nine months of 2019 in Italy, where my grandmother’s only surviving family lives. The work is anchored by my grandmother’s maps of Italy where she would mark and note places of significance. I took these maps and inscribed my own presence by sewing objects onto the surface as markers of my own history. A video of my own photographs and my grandmother’s projects onto the maps and serves to spotlight the objects and marks. I view the maps as incapable of revealing the magnitude of these memories. Through my personal collection of materials from that time and my grandmother’s own collection, I assemble the expansiveness of this memory.
In His Retort, The Alchemist Repeats the Work of Nature (2019)
Dimensions variable
Installation, Cement Fragments, Spools, Shells, Pigment, Photo, Rope, Sandpaper Belt, Display Table, Text, Wire
In His Retort, The Alchemist Repeats the Work of Nature (2019) contains a series of assemblage sculptures synthesized with spools of thread and spiraling shells. The sculptures are displayed as a group, referencing traditional natural history display methods. A rope weaves through large industrial spools on the floor, mirroring the small hand-held spools on the sculptures and doubly guides the viewer’s eye around the space. The installation is a play on repetition of form, scale, display, and line. The title is based on an excerpt from Jim Morrison’s The Lords and New Creatures.
Tools of Tenderness "Series of Three" (2019)
Dimensions variable
Cement Fragments, Spools, Shells, Thread, Washers, Wire, Wood, Pigment, Photo
Tools of Tenderness (2019) is a series of three assemblage sculptures. When making these works, I was interested in the spools of thread inscribing tenderness to the cold-rough cement and wire fragments. By synthesizing my grandmother’s thread and other sentimental materials, the pieces become charged with the tenderness and preciousness of memory.
Tools of Tenderness "Series of Three" (2019)
Dimensions variable
Cement Fragments, Spools, Shells, Thread, Washers, Wire, Wood, Pigment, Photo
Tools of Tenderness "Series of Three" (2019)
Dimensions variable
Cement Fragments, Spools, Shells, Thread, Washers, Wire, Wood, Pigment, Photo
Untitled Assemblage (2019)
5’’ x 3”
Sculpture, Shells, Spool, Washer, Threads of a Blanket
Clip:
Full Video:
AMBROSE (2019)
Running Time: 3:01 minutes
Clip Time: 2:01 minutes
Found photographs of my grandmother paired with an alphabetized list of objects found on the Ambrose Lightship, serve to form associations between discovery and nostalgia.
In the face of destruction, I collect found objects and assemble installations that spool time through a synthesis of sculpture, video, and photography. I collect and assemble found objects as an act of rebellion, a turn in the other direction of entropy to save fragments of daily life that would otherwise slip away. My installations serve as tools of preservation through assemblage.
I believe assembling disparate parts into a new whole is a contemporary take on the alchemical tradition of transformation. I view the materials I work with as capable of retaining energy for transference. This energy is formed by the physical and personal histories each material holds. Spools, threads, shells, and pigment serve as tools of tenderness and sentimentality. Washers, metal, and rock serve as elements of time. When combining these objects, I am interested in capturing an opposing feeling of displacement and belonging. This feeling is captured through a formal balance of weight, fragility, and suspension. My time-based work speaks back to my sculptural work through repetition of pattern and subject, serving as traces back to the original site of collection. By stringing together traces of time through disparate mediums and materials, my installations guide the viewer through a new marking of time.