Giving Notice
Artist Statement
Last January I relocated to Toronto from New York City. In this exhibition I reinterpret pointed, yet everyday moments, from my life in New York. The three dimensional drawings of razor wire in Bushwick, and sculptural representations of shadows in Central Park, are meditations on the edge between image and object, representation and abstraction, form and formlessness.
Giving Notice is an homage to stillness in an era of multitasking and perpetual busyness. When I'm out in the world, and purposefully heading somewhere, I am often stopped in my tracks by something right in front of me - like the choreographed play of a flock of birds, and the way their breasts simultaneously gleam metallic as they turn and swoop towards the sun. There is depth to these ordinary moments and a spaciousness where everything stops and I'm present to witness this quiet "happening".
This work comes from these direct lived experiences. The process usually begins with a photograph or a video and, as in the case of The Inkwell, sometimes the idea is successfully articulated in these media. Other times I bring these ephemeral moments into three-dimensional form. The impulse for Canopycame from observing light shining through the trees and onto the sidewalk in Central Park. The piece began with a photographic footprint of this shadow; I looked to the way snow abstracted tree branches after a Brooklyn storm for ideas about how translate this image into a sculptural form. The finished piece bears little resemblance to its source.
With Roberta’s Defense, the proportions and composition of weathered razor wire outside a Bushwick restaurant required little interference from me. I think of this piece as “found abstraction” or “ready made”. Like a painting by Daan Van Golden or an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture, I didn’t invent it this work as much as I found it. This three dimensional drawing made with a translucent, white material can be understood as an image or an object depending on one’s distance from the piece and the degree to which the silicone is camouflaged by the wall. This fluctuation highlights my interest in the relationship between shadow and object and the dissolution between two and three-dimensional space. The oscillating lights of West of Roberta’s serve to further shift our perception of the piece from a literal representation to an ambiguous abstraction.
Last January I relocated to Toronto from New York City. In this exhibition I reinterpret pointed, yet everyday moments, from my life in New York. The three dimensional drawings of razor wire in Bushwick, and sculptural representations of shadows in Central Park, are meditations on the edge between image and object, representation and abstraction, form and formlessness.
Giving Notice is an homage to stillness in an era of multitasking and perpetual busyness. When I'm out in the world, and purposefully heading somewhere, I am often stopped in my tracks by something right in front of me - like the choreographed play of a flock of birds, and the way their breasts simultaneously gleam metallic as they turn and swoop towards the sun. There is depth to these ordinary moments and a spaciousness where everything stops and I'm present to witness this quiet "happening".
This work comes from these direct lived experiences. The process usually begins with a photograph or a video and, as in the case of The Inkwell, sometimes the idea is successfully articulated in these media. Other times I bring these ephemeral moments into three-dimensional form. The impulse for Canopycame from observing light shining through the trees and onto the sidewalk in Central Park. The piece began with a photographic footprint of this shadow; I looked to the way snow abstracted tree branches after a Brooklyn storm for ideas about how translate this image into a sculptural form. The finished piece bears little resemblance to its source.
With Roberta’s Defense, the proportions and composition of weathered razor wire outside a Bushwick restaurant required little interference from me. I think of this piece as “found abstraction” or “ready made”. Like a painting by Daan Van Golden or an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture, I didn’t invent it this work as much as I found it. This three dimensional drawing made with a translucent, white material can be understood as an image or an object depending on one’s distance from the piece and the degree to which the silicone is camouflaged by the wall. This fluctuation highlights my interest in the relationship between shadow and object and the dissolution between two and three-dimensional space. The oscillating lights of West of Roberta’s serve to further shift our perception of the piece from a literal representation to an ambiguous abstraction.
