My work explores the incorporation of mass-produced bulk items into a statement about the times we live in. I use the materials of today to make my art: plastic of all shapes and forms, air pillows for shipping, office supplies, storage containers, pinwheels, PVC, window fans, garbage cans, nylon, water bottles and other mass-produced items. These items are cheap and readily available. They have replaced steel, ceramics, marble and wood which were once the materials of the builder and artist of previous generations. No longer is merchandise conceived, tailored and delivered to the individual consumer. Money is to be made by multiplying profit on mass-produced, identical products. Consumption is the powerful god of our time.
Plastics now rule our world from water bottles to bumpers on cars to Metro cards. My work takes these ideas as a starting point of inspiration. My goal is to reflect their dominance in our 21st century, through structures of shelter, some from the past such as IGLOO and TEE PEE, and some of the present, such as AIR TUNNEL, GAZEBO and WIND TUNNEL
In AIR TUNNEL, I used hundred’s of air packing pillows to create a tunnel of clear colored layers of translucency. It was an immersive colorful passage, created from mundane plastic polyethylene film.
PLEXI-GLASS OFFICE SUPPLY CUBICLE, was an office cubicle made entirely out of office supplies, inlayed between two layers of Plexiglas. Multicolored notebooks became the walls of the cubicle, colored translucent report covers became overhead fluorescent lighting and cartons of envelope boxes became marble flooring. This work transformed the common office supplies into stained glass windows, alters, and devotional objects to the gods of consumerism.
For my Hunter College Master's thesis, I created IGLOO, a structure from 300 clear plastic storage bins sold at my now local Target in Brooklyn and 600 zip ties from the Brooklyn Home Depot. I attempted to drive home the coldness of "big box" businesses by blowing cold air into the igloo from a portable air conditioner bought from the PC Richard chain store across the street.
TEE PEE explored recreating a native shelter out of modern materials. Plastic shrink-wrap replaced buffalo or other native skins for the sheathing, and PVC plumbing tubing replaced the tree limbs of the support structure. These materials were purchased from the local Home Depot. Fluorescent lighting was placed inside to reflect and reference the new splashy Las Vegas casinos that the Native Americans have used to attract gamblers to their land, in order to have their people survive, if not their native culture.
WIND TUNNEL was an exploration of mass repetition, and recreating what naturally occurs in nature-wind.
GAZEBO was inspired from garbage cans stacked 20 feet tall at The Home Depot.
HOME SHELTER RESPITE was inspired from the stacks of pallets left over from transport of these bulk items to their destinations (The Home Depot, Target Walmart etc). These pallets would be stacked high and abandoned till their next trip. I saw these stacks of wood as shells of modern temples, temples of consumerism, and I set out to build a structure dedicated to them.
WATER BOTTLE MOBILES such as WHITE ANGEL and STARBURST came out of using one of the single most accessible mass-produced cheap material- the plastic water bottle. The bottles were cut up, manipulated and reinterpreted in a playful organic way, inspired by the artist Alexander Calder.
BROOKLYN SUBWAY was a scale model of the Brooklyn section of the New York City Subway made out of plastic bottles and light. It was part of the show New York, New York, New York—so nice we named it thrice, a scale model reproduction of New York City at Flux Factory in Queens New York inspired by the 1964 World's Fair model at the Queens Museum.
FUN TUNNEL was an exploration of movement inspired by the NYC subway systems' flashing lights and energy. It was conceived as an abstract idea of an above-ground subway tunnel designed to fit under the Manhattan Bridge arch supports. It would engage a dark unlit space under the bridge in an energetic colorful way, bringing color and energy to those who would pass through it. Unfortunately, it had to be moved to a new location, an interior warehouse, because of post 9/11 terrorist concerns.
Other work such as- HIVE, RED POOL, BLUE POOL, VERMONT GRAPES have continued the exploration of light, air, color, translucency, plastics, and mass repetition.