VISCERA// Digital Hell Studio
Richmond, VA
May-August 2022

An installation consisting of four rooms; the Grow Room containing plastic totes, BPA spinach and lettuce containers, and soil disturbed by local construction. A quilt made of grocery bags fills another room like a sky. Mirrored puddles and bubble wrap clouds imitate a post-storm view.


GROW ROOM

Plastic totes, BPA spinach and lettuce containers, soil disturbed by local construction.

BLUE SKY SIMULATION ROOM

Plastic grocery bags from Food Lion, mint flavored chewing gum, oscillating fan.

WALKTHROUGH VIDEO

RAIN SIMULATION ROOM

Bubblewrap, Poly twine, Mirror.








CLOUDWATCHING

Plexiglass, dry erase marker, 3:44 video, plastic box, styrofoam, brass hardware.

Public engagement piece in which participants traced the clouds visible from the Food Lion parking lot at 1228 Concord Ave, Richmond, VA 23227.Each person traced the outlines in a different color while engaging in coversation with the artist. The plexiglass was then attatched to the wall, including the tracings from the parking lot, and projected onto. The video projection superimposes other cloudscapes onto these outlines.
Video sites include non-descript but open locations such as parking lots and highways, where moments of awe occur in the supermodern non-place. (see thesis)

OBSOLESCENE // The Anderson Gallery
Richmond, VA

January-Feburary 2022

press release



“And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own — the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to peop

le… She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.”

E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops, November 1909


What does it mean to plan your own obsolescence?


OBSOLESCENE refers to the planned obsolescence of technology, including plastics, and the obsolescence humans will soon face as a result of that same technology. Obsolescence:the process of becoming obsolete or outdated and no longer used. The suffix “-cene” refers to geologic time,  a combining form meaning “new,” “recent,” used as the final element of a compound word, as in, Pleistocene. I see synthetic material as a portrait of our severance from nature. Humans have become an invasive species, bringing with us “disposable” never-decomposing materials we refuse to halt making in the name of comfort and convenience. I implicate myself as a part of this in using only waste generated by my own life and lifestyle.

As antitheses of organic matter, the materials I use can only exist because humans engineered them. Will we create simulations of the natural experiences of days past, using artificial means?

Utilizing post-consumer synthetic waste as material, Styrocumulus is a space to envision possible experiences of the future, to have conversations, and to collectively imagine new answers. The materials used in this installation are byproducts of my career teaching and working with glass as an art form. I see synthetic material is a portrait of our severance from nature. We have become an invasive species, bringing with us “disposable,” never-decomposing materials we refuse to halt making in the name of comfort and convenience. I implicate myself as a part of this in using only waste generated by my own life and lifestyle. As a non-material, a non-thing, a thing that can only be told what to be; plastics and styrofoam can only exist because we made it. I imagine things that will exist after humans- if we are slowly becoming made of plastic, what will the hybrid plastic organisms of the future be? Will we create simulations of the natural experiences of days past, using artificial means? I encourage the viewer to spend some time “cloudwatching” in this space, spending time with these ideas.