Let us take time to heal.
Collaboration with Macklen Mayse
Category: Uncategorized
Garden Paintings
The United States Department of Agriculture claims that corn is used over 90 percent of feed grain production. The corn drought in 2012 was expected to cause retail food cost to significantly increase, mostly for poultry. In Omnivores Dilemma, Michael Pollan states that corn is used in some way for the production of all food items found in a grocery store, besides salt. Our dependency for a single plant makes our society malnourished since corn has very little nutritional benefits.
In this Garden Paintings Series, the surface was built up with industrial process that include concrete. They were then buried in the ground to grow seeds over them to allow the roots to attached themselves to the painted surfaces.
Corn Plant, Concrete, Dirt, Acrylic Paint, Metal Mesh on Wood Panel.
36″ x 48″
The surface was constructed then buried in the soil to allow corn to grow from a seed.
Condensation Cube – Exterior
Condensation Cube – Exterior
Steel, Water, Air Currents, Refrigerator, Climate in Exhibition Situation
Hans Haacke states, “The process of condensation does not end. The box has a constantly but slowly changing appearance that never repeats itself. The conditions are comparable to a living organism that reacts in a flexible manner to its surroundings.”
Condensation Cube – Exterior, is derived from Haacke’s Condensation Cube, 1963-65, where he critically and politically challenges the interior system. He uses plexiglass so that we transparently analyze the space. I am taking the aspect of post-industrial urban landscape, as steel separates and discourages transparency within our politically derived culture. In this work, the unseen interior space is chilled which creates condensation from the surrounding air that will break down the steel structure. Within the second law of thermodynamics, this visually acknowledges that the seemingly non-penetrative system can and will be penetrated, slowly, drip by drip. It is inevitable that it will mix itself back in with the dirt, like living organisms.
PDF:
Haacke’s Condensation Cube: The Machine in the Box and the Travails of Architecture
Mark Jarzombek
“All our lauded technology, our very civilization, is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.”
— Albert Einstein
“Scientists have long suspected the exacerbating effects of plants’ adverse reactions to climate change, but the study helps further confirm along the dangerous truth. What’s so perplexing about the correlation between rising temperatures and rain forests’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide is the cyclical nature of it. The more temperatures rise, the less carbon dioxide tropical forests absorb; and the less carbon dioxide tropical forests absorb, the more temperatures rise.”
Links
Greg Lindquist, BOMB converstation with Orit Gat
Social Sculpture – wikipedia
Center for Art + Environment – Nevada Museum of Art
AER Project – Tangible air pollution
Slavoj Žižek in Examined Life (Astra Taylor, 2008)
Pratt – CSDS, Center for Sustainable Design Strategies
Newtown Creek, Brooklyn
Click on images to reveal images of the Newtown Creek project.
NO SWIMMING
NO BOATING
NO FISHING
This project is to invite conversation concerning water sanitation. The canvas acts as a symbol of traditional and historical painting to criticize this ill-suited landscape. The canvas also acts as material to absorb and document the current condition that this water is in. It was attached to Newtown Creek from 10/10/13 to 01/10/14.
Concrete separates the rain from the soil so water accumulation has no where to go but in the drains in which they quickly fill up. Water is typically seen as a cleaning agent, but not here. The rain mixes with bio-solids and is forced to excrete into the east river. The creek was also used as a waste site for industries since the 1850’s.
Extreme caution was reinforced during clean-up to residents near the creek after hurricane sandy hit the city last October. The toxic sediment was churned and discharged back into homes. This canvas was in the water as the hurricane passed the city. Please view the following links for more information.
http://www.epa.gov/region2/superfund/npl/newtowncreek
http://bushwickbk.com/2011/01/04/bushwick-left-out-of-newtown-cleanup-goodies/
http://www.everybodyact.com/newtown_creek_celebration/newtown_creek_celebration.html