A House Is a Leaky Vessel
Tillinghast marsh, Rhode Island, 2024
Hand painted and dye sublimated prints on reclaimed curtains, aluminum 10x10’ frame
A house-like structure made of barely-there fabric screens, this installation makes visible ways in which human domestic space is nested within larger ecologic and planetary systems. The fabric is composed of alternating blank and painted panels constructed from used fabric curtains. In their original context curtains keep the world out, but here they serve as a permeable boundary letting light, wind and the larger landscape into the space. House in this context is related to the word ecology, derived from the Greek oikos (eco-) meaning home or dwelling place.
Entry/Exit for Bodies in Motion
Ladd Observatory, Providence, RI 2024
Watercolor animation projected on historic astronomical clock tower
Doorway textile: hand painted and dye sublimated prints on reclaimed fabric
This installation at the Ladd Observatory, home to the earliest astronomical clocks in the United States, invites viewers to consider non-human temporalities and timekeepers.
Exhibited with Viewing Velocities, a group show curated by artist Will Beattie.
Water Television
2024
5:43 min looping video, sound, mouth-blown glass, water, projector
Light from a projector hits the back of this hand-made glass orb and the surface becomes a screen. We watch a murky human figure, swimming, as if suspended inside the glass. We hear bubbles rising to the surface, distorted by an underwater microphone. Glowing and self contained, the sculpture is reminiscent of other watery worlds: eggs, the specimen jars from natural history collections, our planet earth. There is an opening at the top of the sculpture, its contents permeable, open to spill or contamination.
Made with assistance from Jocelyne Prince (glass) and Marissa Hutton (video)
Millenia Bench
2024
Reclaimed yellow pine, sand-blasted glass, shellac (insect secretions Kerria lacca)
Annual growth rings, hand cut notches from a 19th century timber joint, scars from when nails were square, a shellac finish, and illustrated glass tiles—all create a surface for contemplating Donna Haraway’s thick present. This expanded temporality senses the “thick and fibrous now” as embedded within long-term, complex and layered human, ecologic and cosmic histories.
Slow Walk for You (While the Planet Spins)
Barrington, Rhode Island, 2024
A site-specific performance. Costumes: hand painted cotton, sewn and dyed silk and reclaimed curtains
The performance begins with a procession. Three dancers unfold rectangular fabric forms, composed of silk and transparent windows, each with a painted frame (a comet, dandelion seeds and a volcanic eruption). In formation with members of the audience, the group carries the fabric outstretched like flags down a grassy hill, across an intertidal marsh and onto the beach. With audience assistance, the dancers slip into the fabric forms, their imagery suddenly animate. Like three fates of time, their movement considers forces of change: wind and water erosion, the earth turning on its axis, a human presence on the landscape.
Made in collaboration with Claire Alrich