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:

Progress

It's been bleak. Terrifying.
The days are getting longer, I hear.

I finished our chores. Now I get to make a mess of all of this information.

There's still work to do.
Ain't that just the way.

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Now available as 9"x17" full color posters!

Sculpture Collaging

within the continued practice of cannibalizing my own work, i have begun to assemble 

collage-work using manipulated images from details of my sculptures. 

this allows me to retain favoritism of certain"moments" in the materials.

i can isolate certain textures i may have an internal struggle regarding preciousness in the details...

zoom-in, zero-in.

rescale, retrace, relocate

build new landscapes, explosions, textures..

piece them together with images of classical sculpture belonging to "the people"

found online. found in cemeteries and public parks- strangers made of stone . 

now inhabit a new terrain.

(both in process)

Lake Hitchcock Presents

COMING SOON!

collaborative images of Bodybanks and Catgirl Generator's dual research project:

DIAGRAM A remediates the Teleharmonium:

Chris Nelson reveals the true meaning of life:

AND MUCH MUCH MORE

PARSONS HALL PROJECT SPACE PRESENTS:

LAKE HITCHCOCK CENTER FOR THE BOOK ARTS

MAGAZINE 1: THE UNCANNY PIONEER VALLEY

MAGAZINE LAUNCH & LOOPED VIDEO SCREENING

CONTENTS

The magazine will include alternate covers, artist pages, national & international

dispatches, research projects, puzzles and secrets from over 45 contributors.

The magazine will also include student project pages and video from both 

Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, MA, Department of Communication, Media and Theater arts 

and Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY, Department of Art.

VIDEO CURATION

Accompanying the publication will be a special one night only looped 

video screening curated around the theme of performance art for the camera.

TIME & DATE & ADDRESS

PARSONS HALL PROJECT SPACE: 362 DWIGHT ST. HOLYOKE, MA

EVENT & RECEPTION (FREE): SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23RD, 7-10:30PM

before i tore it all down and made it all go away

ritual with meteor form and hoop skirt. that which appears to be me is really cat girl generator in nude face make-up with latex finger extensions.

coming soon: the adventures of bodybanks and cat girl generator featured in "lake hitchcock presents the uncanny pioneer valley" a publication of parson's hall project space.