a thousand channels
a thousand channels
Oxbow Gallery, 2022
image transfer on handmade reclaimed cardboard substrate, found wood, water bottle, tulip, wire, salvaged fabric scraps, mylar
My most recent work is a body of sculptural works using Dutch Golden Age still lives as a base along with recent academic analysis reframing them as portraits of colonial souvenirs and the beginning of widespread ecological destruction. The work pairs photo transfers of the paintings on scrap wooden frames with sculptures recreating the paintings using contemporary waste materials that can be directly tied to the history of Imperialist conquest.
I make my substrate out of used cardboard that I cut and stitch together and then gesso, on a wooden frame that I make from scrap wood collected from various waste sites related to global trade routes. They are standalone pieces that have multiple layers, audio and video elements, eluding to the layers of concept and history embedded in their history. In 2021, I was an artist-in-residence at Recology Seattle for eight months, where all of the residential and commercial recycling in the commercial recycling in the Seattle Metro area goes. It is an immense facility, with literal tons of material passing through its 70,000 square feet weekly, being sorted by dozens of workers on a three-story machine, before being baled and shipped overseas.
Faced with this material, where it comes from and where its going, I can’t help but think about cultural legacy. What we inherit and what we leave behind. The routes that these materials take to get to the hands of consumers, the route they will take on their freight ships back to Asia, and how these routes mimic the routes created by European Imperialists hundreds of years ago.
Legacy and history. Spools of thread still unraveling. A long, looming shadow. Where do these threads lead, and how are we implicated as artists working in an industry that continues this legacy of object commodification?
Hans Ginger Powder and McCormick Organic Ground Cumin (after Heda's Banquet Piece with Mince PIe)
In these pieces, it is just as important to recreate the surface as it is to create a precarious and meldable structure that holds up the piece (made of reclaimed wood scraps that are connected by only staples). In this way, I am hoping to draw connection between surface and structure - the beautiful objects painters make on canvas and the vast network that enables the creation of these pieces.
Through the making of the precarious structure, I also invoke my own subversion of historical painting traditions which privilege the creation of object by a person seen worthy of the medium.
Polyester diamond quilted fabric fabricated in China (after Kalf's Still Life with a Chinese Bowl, Nautilus Cup and Other Objects)
A detail view showing the substrate that I create by cutting down used cardboard, stitching it together by hand, and coating it with gesso and kenaf fiber. By creating my own substrate and contending with the material histories of the elements used, I hope to contend with the myth of the ‘blank canvas’. The canvas/linen that was planted, picked, processed and the wood that was cut to create a canvas is not a neutral material, nor are the methods used for acquiring and transporting this material neutral.
How are we, as artists, so often implicated in the systems that we critique?
As a part of this body of work, I have been creating a series (8 of 24 pictured here) of small sculptures that depict objects commonly found in Dutch Golden Age Still Lives (goblets, pocketwatches, small jars of jam, porcelain vessels, silverware) recreated from contemporary waste materials collected at local sites.