working title: “the ground”

Head of a prophet & Head of an elder (Works-in-Progress)

Lindenwood from salvaged church statuary and architectural elements, 1890 Lauscha Müeller-Uri Prosthetic Glass Eyes purchased from ‘sir_flacon’ who notes “they where found while digging in factory yard in Limbach in Thuringia Germany” (Nürnberg, Germany), copper refrigerant tube and foil salvaged from discarded air-conditioning units (Queens, NY), tin smelted from salvaged solder reclaimed from discarded electronic components, braided copper wire reclaimed from discarded headphones, epoxy resin, urethane colorant, coal & graphite dust collected from freight-loss at CSX switching yard (Grafton, WV), “1 box Alloy Pin Porcelain Teeth Material Colors Shade A3 24# full set” from denta_24h (ZhengZhou, Henan, China), stainless & coated steel fasteners, dowel pins, nylon spacers, zinc washers, brass fasteners salvaged from VDOT modeling workshop liquidation (Richmond, VA), aluminum stock drops, expanded security mesh reclaimed from abandoned ‘Mechanical Fabric Company’ mill building (Providence, RI), discontinued red brass serpentine chain footage & jewelry findings from closeout dealer (Providence, RI), carbonate sedimentary rock & Silurian dolomite collected from Upper Peninsula portion of the Niagara Escarpment (Cedarville, MI), cement fragments from ‘re-development site’ construction (Brooklyn, NY), salvaged brass and steel mounting hardware, hose clamps, tin foil from takeout meal, mahogany reclaimed from Dole banana pallets, discarded cymbal stand, C-stand & grip head salvaged from photography studio closeout (Brooklyn, NY), Quartz countertop cutoffs from Brooklyn apartment renovations (Brooklyn, NY), cement cast of reclaimed Styrofoam packaging inserts (Queens, NY)

72in. x 24in. x 24in.

2020-21

note: see exhibition proposal at bottom of page

Partial Body of a Saint (Work-in-Progress)

Lindenwood from salvaged church statuary and architectural elements (Brooklyn, NY), discontinued yellow brass box chain footage & jewelry findings from closeout dealer (Providence, RI), pull tabs from cat food cans found over the period of a year on the sidewalk in the neighborhood of the artist’s studio (Brooklyn, NY), aluminum stock drops and steel fasteners from liquidated machine shop (Paterson, NJ), portland cement stolen from furloughed municipal construction site (Queens, NY), 420 million year old carbonate sedimentary rock & coral fossils from Silurian dolomite collected from Lower Peninsula portion of the Niagara Escarpment (Rosendale, NY), partial mannequin from photography studio closeout used as found mold, contents of several boxes left on the street curb for collection the week the artist’s neighbor Maria passed.

64in. x 24in. x 18in.

2021

unnamed Priest with Libation (Work-in-progress)

1 year of chewed Double Mint gum, copper tubing and radiator fins salvaged from AC window units, solder from neighborhood estate sale, copper wire reclaimed from electrical conduit, 1890 Lauscha Müeller-Uri Prosthetic Glass Eyes purchased from ‘sir_flacon’ who notes “they where found while digging in factory yard in Limbach in Thuringia Germany” (Nürnberg, Germany), Salvage AC unit, artificial flowers collected from street outside Linden Hill cemetery, aluminum stock drops and steel fasteners from liquidated machine shop, Slab of fossilized sea floor & worm tunnels from Marcellas Shale formation (Westport, PA), bathroom sink from condemned building demolition (Queens, NY), Auxilliary Water Pump from salvage 2007 Toyota Prius, steel pipe from satellite antennae array from residential demolition (Queens, NY), towel from street, cement cast of reclaimed Styrofoam packaging inserts (Queens, NY)

76in. x 48in. 48in.

2021

Untitled Cenotaph (Work-in-Progress)

Mixed media (full material list still in progress: Includes cement slabs cast from Styrofoam packing inserts, pallet made from salvaged marble countertop, one-years’ worth of personal belongings collected from sidewalks surrounding New York City cemeteries), fossil coral from Niagara Escarpment, et. Al)

24in. x 50in. x 72in.

2021

Working Title: “The Ground”

This was a low year. A year spent looking at the ground. A year spent walking, outdoors, alone or with others. Spent looking at the sidewalk, at the things people were throwing away. This was a year spent trying to find the value in the least of what we had, of what we had been taking for granted. This was a year I spent in part by visiting every major cemetery in the 5 boroughs of New York City, where I live. This was a year I also spent digging in the ground at various informal archeological sites across the city; from Dead Horse Bay to municipal construction sites after-hours.

“the ground'“ is a years-long sculptural body of work begun in the summer of 2020 that consists of a large scale sculptural installation exploring grief, public spaces, and reclaiming the value of things we’ve thrown away. Through this project, I have been constructing a funerary monument to late-stage American capitalism using material reclaimed and salvaged from shuttered retail businesses, industry, and the consumer recycling stream, along with imagined portraits and partial figures made from donated medical scans of individuals suffering from manufacturing and industry-related cancers.

This current body of work is based in deep research into the monuments of mourning and memorialization across the American landscape. It is also based in deep research of the history of American industry and resource extraction. It is also an exploration of the production of commercial ‘value’ and the physical and spiritual cost of that ‘value’. The work in this project is made of reclaimed material collected from the street, sidewalks, side-yards, alleys, and other interstitial public spaces of the cities of the American northeast during the coronavirus pandemic. Because of this shared origin, the conditions of the physical, social, and economic landscape of a late-stage capitalist American metropolis inflect the material, and thus content of the work; loss, mourning, decay, resourcefulness, and scrapping fragments together in the face of failing systems.

Product-display stands, shelving, and countertops from pandemic-shuttered retail businesses. Copper refrigerant tubing salvaged from discarded AC units and broken refrigerators left under highway overpasses. Stranded wire from broken earbuds and shattered electronics. Tile and masonry fragments from building demolitions. Ceramic shards from 150-year-old municipal dumping sites. 420-million-year-old fossil lime cement from a decommissioned mine that supplied the material for the base of the Statue of Liberty. These irreducible material fragments, their history, and their poetics, are the conceptual and emotional center of this exhibition.

These reclaimed materials are used to compose funerary monuments for the public who have been irreparably harmed by systems of commerce. Imagined portraiture is made using a DIY forensic facial reconstruction technique enacted on anonymized skulls rendered from an online cancer imaging database of CT scans. A pair of legs is cast in a faux terrazzo using reclaimed cement and the contents of boxes left on the curb from when a neighbor passed away. A sarcophagus is made using a discarded mini fridge and cement casts of Styrofoam packing inserts collected from neighborhood recycling, covered in mosaics using tile and 19th ce. ceramic fragments dug up from the incidental archaeological site of a municipal sewage work site. A statue of a priest giving sacrament is made from salvaged refrigerator tubing and a full quarantine years’ worth of chewing gum. The thing held in common by all of the physical elements of the exhibition is that I could only collect them because no one else felt they had any remaining value. This is the liberatory quality we can look for in the material of waste streams. This work proposes that what has been drained of its worth within a capitalist framework now affords the opportunity to be reimagined and reused as something of a radically different order, something that speaks of elegy, care, and remembrance.