I build sculptural pieces in order to explore the social and cultural implications of “objectivity” in the production of knowledge. I am examining the Western archive as narrative, a grandiose fiction substantiated by visual information (or its lack) and mediated by language. The archive is an information infrastructure predicated on objectivity through observation, a great bank of evidence accumulated, ordered and defined since the mid-19th century. It is culturally couched in Enlightenment social theory in which civilization and progress are synonymous. Civilization, it was believed, is marked by agency, the agency of great men, which situated the illiterate (and likely leaderless) primitive world as the benchmark upon which progress is measured. Although the social idealism of the 19th century proved untenable in the aftermath of WWI and II, the hierarchical system through which we filter and accommodate new information, a methodology that mediates all that is knowable, remains subtly but firmly entrenched.
For Westerners the archive is the physical location of our recorded history. Although we treat it as evidence, the archive is a great deal more nuanced, contradictory and incomplete than any work of fiction. It is marked by the folly of the human hands that gathered and ordered it, and the vast quantity of information misconstrued or lost. My objects are situated within this empty space in the archive, not in order to fill it, but to imagine the implications of an irredeemable past.
Fluff, or Some Feathers: The Etymology of the City Pigeon 2015
44" x 34" x 12" Weight: 1 lb.
A curio cabinet as insubstantial as its contents for a bird that everyone hates. This piece is made of one layer of Birdseye Maple veneer affixed to a Bass skeleton.
Behind each door a veneered shelf holds one pigeon feather, each of which is tagged with an interesting pigeon fact.
After Chaco 2015
50" x 60" x 3.5"
A wall cabinet with 8 hidden chambers.
This piece is made of hundreds of hand cut and shaped steel pieces welded into a topographical sheet.
The Observatory: American Culture Demystified 2016
68" x 27" x 15"
Curio Cabinet meets early Ethnography in this piece. The cabinet contains miscellaneous objects, Magic Lantern slides depicting antiquated facial surgeries, and fake ethnographic journals to contextualize the strange assortment within.
Pinhole GoSlow 6x6- A medium format pinhole camera 2016
-maple, brass, nickel silver, fine silver, rare earth magnets
The View from the Bullet Train/Selfie 2016
A record of 20 minutes of landscape somewhere between Odawara and Atami, taken with hand-made pinhole camera. The yellow blob in the middle is the camera's reflection.
Furniture, more or less.
Love/Hate Seat 2014
For lovers who wish to make a statement other than a slammed door.
The breakup.
Castiglioni Flashlight 2014
About as useful as it looks. (For the discerning buyer.)
Little Bird Chairs 2013
Bottomdweller 2013
Mechanical Angler Fish
Pendant Lamp 2015
Table 2013
