This work is biological, informed by cells and malignancies. While caring for my husband through his cancer treatment and subsequent stem cell transplant, I experienced the loss of control and the desire to control the disease.
The Punnett square is a diagram used by biologists to determine the outcome of cross breeding. I used this formula to set limits on the work. The work is slip-cast porcelain and electroformed copper. The porcelain, with its ready made appeal, represents stem cells; while the copper, like diseased cells, become malignant and develop irregularities through the
process of electroforming.
The resulting work pairs pristine and deceptively strong white porcelain with lacquered electroformed copper, showcasing the different material and emphasizing the strength and beauty of a single cell.
This work is available at Galerie Noel Guyomarc'h in Montreal, Canada.
Read a review of this work here:
This work is currently available at Simone DeSousa Gallery in Detroit, MI.
logo design : kimmie parker
This piece circled back to an attraction to smokestacks. The work is celebration of my fixation as opposed to a direct message of anxiety and tension of a system collapsing. I created a single autonomous object. The box, with its external walls covered in grids, is an idealized system; it represents the infinite possibilities of what any system inside could be that required so many smokestacks.
The smokestack are about multiples, and the compulsion to fabricate multiples. I became my own factory and assembly line: piercing out patterns, folding and soldering, producing everything in batches, and assembling parts for many before the whole.
I set out to use the disquietude surrounding the decaying industrial landscape of Detroit as a springboard to explore industrial systems, large-scale organizational methods and glorified efficiency. The body of work began as an investigation into my anxiety, with the goal of evoking that anxiety in my audience, but what it became was a calming reflection on the comforting aspects of industry. I discovered that factories don’t make me anxious, and instead I found myself fixating on the more reassuring qualities of working parts, rather than the stress of watching them collapse. Despite the appearance of chaos up close, the piece is extremely quiet. In the end, the work came full circle, reflecting the honest value of a drawing that had inspired the work.
photo credits : nick fallon photography
model : yokai makoni
