Artifacts of an Eventual Past
Restlessness, a love of the material world and a manic work ethic drive my search to uncover the revelatory in the ordinary. I choose materials for their innate transience. Security envelopes and notebook reinforcement labels are among the cumbersome detritus of daily life, yet they purport to safeguard privacy and preserve the transient life of the documents they protect. Paper maps point to places lived and traveled and suggest new paths, even as they themselves have evaporated into cyberspace.
Recent works use the interior patterning of security envelopes -- so-called Data Protection Patterning-- to investigate perceived ideals about comfortable living and its attendant risks. I create installations, drawings, embroideries and photographs from the patterns in bills and credit card offers I receive in the mail. The purpose of these patterns is to keep us secure; in turning them outward their role becomes subverted. The installations are arranged to evoke the domestic house museums I once imagined as home or the alienation of furniture showrooms. Insistent and illusory offers of a better life are embodied in these beautiful envelopes.
In making these works I am reinvestigating themes that have motivated my art practice for more than a decade: technology vs. the handmade, control vs. chaos, the uncertain prospect of security, obsolescence, as well as the patience and intimacy involved in making this work.
