Cutting the Fat

hi, i'm moving my blog and my website in with each other here:

merging website and blog...

it's a process....and i'm  turtle sometimes. a turtle.

see you there?

this is my new television

diving for the ruins
14"x11"

 I've been busy taking shots around the studio. rescaling and combining images. creating surreal landscapes and oddities to my liking.

sop
17"x14"

cat-girl generator's triple self-portrait
17"x14"

Ruining Wonder- coming soon

This future-past monument is an ambiguous architectural structure inspired by ancient temples, hanging gardens, parade floats, altars and wedding cakes. Constructed from molded styrofoam appliance packaging, the surfaces are transformed to resemble human flesh using a palette of cosmetics which simulate bruising and blushing. The form is repeatedly punctured with quills of cocktail party souveneirs and luncheon sandwich skewers. It is crawling with sporadic clusters of barnacles made of confections' wrappers lined with bobbles and beads.

 I find myself getting snagged by the underpinnings of artifice, sameness, disposability and excess within these objects that are (mass) produced for the purpose of subtly enhancing our experience. I see these store-bought frills accessories as signifiers remarking on not only the anxiety of the purchaser, but possibly also the trauma of the unknown factory worker.  I'm playing with taking these articles out of context and incorporating them as a texture. I see them as a fungus, an infection, as much as a senseless decoration.

alternate views

ruining wonder

ruining: progress report

i put some time in this weekend manufacturing some trauma and some joy.  

future archeology:

castle top taking shape
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artificial christmas tree, drink umbrellas, fancy toothpicks, plastic, cupcake and bon-bon papers, plastic swords, synthetic berries, silk flower petals
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eyeshadow bruising...
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view from below: rewarded with shiny things to gaze up at
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styro-temple in process

I've been assembling this modern-day temple/ tea house/ pyramid form out of styrofoam packaging. I'm beginning the surface treatment with liquid foundation , blush and eyeshadows to create effects ranging from blushing to bruising.  The top is taking shape as an irregular, jagged, sand-castle-like form on which empty bon-bon and cupcake paper liners are growing like barnacles.

This is will be part of a solo show titled "Ruining" at Sarah Doyle Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI- to be installed at the end of March. 

GUTS @ 119 Gallery

Dan and I recently collaborated on a sonic sculptural piece for a show at 119 Gallery in Lowell, MA.

The theme and title of the show is "Guts".  We set about cannabalizing existing work from our repertoire in the studio and combined our individual aesthetics with broken, discarded technologies to create a vision of post-apocalyptic carnage. 

The pile of twisted and exploded viscera is at once a festive, puppet-like animation with soft Christmas-y red felt and glistening green and silver circuit boards,

 and a revolting disemboweling resembling special effects borrowed from 

John Carpenter's"The Thing". 

The whole mess is splayed out on the floor in front of a tower of amplifiers which play an unsettling, subtly shifting, crunching drone which is produced from hand-sculpted electronic devices (one encased in something resembling a sizable tumor, one which mimics an improvised explosive device) which hang in front of a speaker they feedback into. 

collaborative collages

Did You Know:
Dan and I keep an ongoing collage catalogue?
Merging of techniques evidenced here: