MFA Thesis Exhibit: Funerals are not lacking in flowers
Before the feet of my children, and my children’s children 3 x 13 x 2 ft. Wood, foam, tornado paper, glue, decidedly unwanted lantern, friend’s dryer lint, cardboard boxes, plaster, acrylic and latex paint, contact wallpaper from Madonna, work shirt, plastic toys, cotton, Bonnie’s yarn, wheat paste, silicone, punched greenware, one lover’s compact discs, the other lover’s photographs, coffee grounds, hair—human, dog and cat, plastic tub, lost cap, play dough, one month of disposable contact lenses, egg shells, wax, rubber, dead leaves, inner tube, road salt, burned matches, fashion puff, busted computer battery, water bottle, faux fur and feathers.
Perhaps a way out, Supported Form, Deflated, black shape 6 x 10 x 5 ft. Cardboard, Fall Festival fabric strips, paper towel, clay slip, pillow, concrete, wood, PVC pipe, tape, latex and spray paint, work shirts, packaging materials, and work coffee grounds.
When describing thing-agency Jane Bennett references Odradek from Kafka’s short story, “The Cares of a Family Man”. Odradek embodies a form of care aesthetics comprised of the scavenged and broken, transcending ownership and property. Like the offspring of Odradek, the sculptures seem to have returned from a tour of the neighborhood. Some are poised to move after a rest while others stager on the scene to recover from a wound. The work includes bright colors that can conjure cheer and delight, but funerals are not lacking in flowers. The colors correlate with ones used for coding crises: bomb threat, fire, abduction, spill of hazardous materials, missing person, loss of utilities, etc. Certainly these colors are routinely seen all around us in less urgent context, yet it is this very lack of urgency in the everyday that fuels global problems.