Group Exhibitions: Alluminati, UNLV, Las Vegas, curated by Emily Budd | Long Distance R.A.D.A.R., Las Vegas, NV | London Biennale, Las Vegas, NV, Curated by Matthew Couper & Jo Russ | Unshelved, The Studio at Sahara West Library, Las Vegas, NV | Neon Cornucopia, La Matadora Gallery, Joshua Tree, CA, Curated by Brent Holmes | Drive-Thru Open Studios, UNLV, Las Vegas, NV
Graduate school when the pandemic hit
We were asked to take our studio practices home until we knew more about what was going on. As such, our practices turned to smaller, more intimate and introspective work. I started a daily collage and haiku practice using vintage bodybuilding magazines and began pairing them as some way of continuing to make art in the face of a global pandemic. Below is the statement for these collages, which are below.
With such confinement there is an inevitable shift towards seeing in new, intimate ways. Public spaces feel alien, sometimes threatening or foreboding. Mundane, everyday spaces, regularly blotted out of critical examination by the processes of the brain, become both a homebase for safety and a place to fester. This pandemic is a cage without borders.
Since my hands are so clean I have to keep them busy, they’re so used to constantly interacting with the world without a second thought, and I feel my muscles will turn to stone and grow fuzzy moss and mold if I sit still any longer. All my thoughts are now second thoughts, second guesses, second chances.
I’ve been thinking about bodies, my body, the implications of bodies in space and how publics are shifting. Any loneliness is infinitely compounded when something so simple as touch is culturally outlawed. Even the skies and telephone wires seem sparse with birds. I’m cutting and dissecting, creating isolated moments of self, selves, cells. They are the distortions in the mirror, the deep thoughts of staring at the ceiling or carpet, the texture of the walls. Memories and abstractions that run together, what day is it, did I sleep at all last night.
Paper is inherently fragile, temporary. The cuttings not pinned or adhered down, but gently lift and bend with the humidity or age, and could fall apart with the gentlest of breathes. They beckon to be touched. Do not touch. I’ve been trapped in my house and have been trying not to go stir crazy and have been noticing things in new ways that I haven’t had the time or boredom to notice. I noticed the other day that the mirror in my bathroom isn’t perfect, that it’s actually distorted, and realized all mirrors are probably distortions to a degree. But then remembering my eye is kind of fucked up and sometimes I can see 2 penumbra of images, so we never really see a true “reflection” of ourselves, and since everyone sees differently, no one sees the same reflection.
A part of that environment of home is my self, my body, and time.
Click an image to read it’s accompanying haiku
On Day 119 of the COVID-19 pandemic I created this video. It follows an internal dialogue digesting the thoughts and feelings of being alone, lonely, and isolated in a time of extreme global uncertainty. Focusing on themes of vulnerability and self-care, the video follows a central disembodied figure with its own features superimposed on themselves, creating a floating collage of body parts preening and caressing as it talks itself through dissociation. Background sounds reflect the new daily ambience of a life without the hustle and bustle of humans, sounds heard while timelines for staying at home are continuously expanded. The figure lives in a liminal space that is simultaneously inside and outside, in the sky and in a bedroom, with an unrecognizable yet familiar feeling. The figure reaches deep into the unconscious to turn the familiar strange, just as we found our daily surroundings turn alien and foreign when forced to occupy them every minute of every day.
“V”
Re:Monuments
A Crucible for Re-Casting Monuments
A collaborative zine with John McVay.
This zine is a point of departure from traditional monuments. It serves as a source of inspiration and proposals for consideration, critical examination, and distilling our shared values. We are putting the tools for change in the hands of the community so that they can plan for a future we all helped build—is it one we can all be proud of?
Walk it off
A trophy and homage to the kids forced to play baseball when they’d rather be gardening, dancing, or drawing.
I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I Know The Way
billboard vinyl, wood, spray paint, foliage
Part of the “Unshelved” exhibition at Sahara West Library, Las Vegas, NV
soap
Soap is documentation of a suds-tastic performance with an unscented lime-green casting of a baseball in soap that has been used to wash the body. This series of photos addresses ideas around men’s health, leisure, and commodification. I’ve appropriating visual language from men’s health and beauty advertising for deodorant and shampoo, using cool colors and dark tones to emphasize the “manliness” of the images, as seen in ads for Gilette products or Axe body spray. The baseball itself is lime-green, a reference to the speed of sport (fields, balls, and Gatorade) and the high-visibility of labor. In some circles of men, hygiene is not manly; smelling like flowers is not manly; wiping your ass is not manly. Conversations about smells and fluids are areas for jokes and insults—revealing any insecurities about the body are subject to ridicule. This devolves into fear and willful ignorance or avoidance of any information or education around the subject, which can lead to serious issues with health, relationships, and job performance. These photos employ dramatic lighting to emphasize the alien nature of Soap and its relationship to the male body and psyche as scary, unknown, and threatening. The Soap becomes a glowing alien egg and the hand turns into a grotesque deformation of wet spoiled flesh. It’s strange how foreign parts of the body can become when they’re closely inspected or tasked to hold an object, how something that feels so natural can look so wrong. There’s also probably a joke about playing with and/or washing your balls, not dropping the soap.
The feminist gesture is one that engages with discourse around gender constructs in a way that questions, criticizes, illuminates, reflects, satirizes, masquerades, abjects or otherwise talks back to or disrupts the system of order of those constructs. This gesture is one of acknowledgement and love, validating fears as an act of empathy in attempts to gain ground in mutual understanding and healing. Trauma often requires healers, and an unscented soap baseball is a hand-made home-made act of love, a gift. It is both playful, utilitarian, and considerate, if a bit pointed towards personal hygiene; a gentle offering of self care and pampering that doesn’t scream “you stink.” These are opposite the traditional male qualities of being offensively direct, derisive, and crude, if addressed in any way at all given its personal nature.
