QUILT, 2022. On view at the Rochester Institute of Technology as part of the Anna Ballarian Visiting Artist Series.
SHIFTING FOUNDATIONS, 2023. This vibrantly painted sculpture suggests the idea of a home undergoing change, with its construction-orange color, crisscrossing scaffolding, and missing sections. While inside the museum a series of paintings focuses on people in interior “home” spaces, the sculpture talks about “home” from an exterior perspective and highlights how housing is becoming increasingly more difficult for people to obtain.
There are many reasons for the shortage of affordable housing, including limited land availability, not enough houses being built, population growth, and a lack of affordable housing investment. Although the lack of affordable homes is increasing, there are also many vacant homes including abandoned homes and luxury investment properties. Taking inspiration from the map-like design on the sculpture, how can we plan housing and work together to ensure everyone has a good home? When there's no ceiling, how can we complete our collective global home to build a roof over all of our heads?
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On view at the Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio.
QUILT, 2021. In a quilt many different parts, each with its own story, come together to form a complex system, much like how we are all intricately connected to each other and to the natural environment. If one part of the quilt is removed, the pattern becomes unbalanced. In this sculpture, each square section or quilt block is unique, varying in depth, pattern, and color, but combined the larger quilt pattern becomes even more unique.
Quilting is a traditional practice that can be found throughout the world, in textile form and also in other formats such as painted on barn exteriors throughout the US. Handmade patchwork quilts are strongly linked to ideas surrounding warmth, memory, home, and the cycle of life. Quilts are also symbolic of creativity through resourcefulness as pieces of the quilt are often made from scraps of no longer useful fabrics or clothes. In this sculpture, for example, Quilt is made in part from wood that was repurposed from the support frame of a previous sculpture, and cut at different lengths and depths to form an interlocking arrangement.
PLASTIC DREAMS: SUNRISE AND SUNSET. Plastic Dreams: Sunrise and Sunset is an outdoor sculpture made from recycled plastic and located in Messejana, Portugal. Messejana is a small rural town of about 800 people. The sculpture is made from hundreds of pounds of plastic which was collected, washed, sorted by type and color, shredded, and then molded into 300 individual parts with a DIY manual injection machine.