Psycho/geography, Psycho/physics, Psycho/matter

Place and geography impact and effect one’s psychological state and memory. Place is easily described by its physical characteristics; what is underfoot, the building you’re in, the natural elements.  Chicago as place has infinite material moments that can describe it in terms of time, history, and complex human ecology.  A material moment is anything in our physical realm; the things we construct and craft, the natural world we construct from, and the things we discard and forget.

In psycho/geo/matter I propose to harvest Chicago’s material moments as determined by her residents and physically incorporate that matter into glass blocks to be constructed into 4 sculptures for the State/Lake CTA.  The “matter” would be solicited through a process of community engagement with the residents of Chicago.  Possible donations from Chicagoans could include: a dried flower bouquet, Chicago River water, a wooden spoon from the kitchen, vintage copper penny, used aluminum foil from a BBQ, glass bead necklace, dust from a cupboard, a love letter,……

The types of materials that are compatible for inclusion into hot glass are limited to; carbon based, some mineral based, and most metals.  However, there are processes I can use during production that will allow for the incorporation of other materials. Liquid such as water can be used to chill or crackle the exterior surface, for noncompatible materials(plastic) I can take an impression of the material in sand and incorporate that impression within a blow-mold.

Each of the four sculptures will contain approximately 168 glass blocks, or more accurately 168 glass truncated tetrahedron blocks supported by a steel framework. Each glass block will be individually hand blown into a custom designed mold and will incorporate the harvested materials.

2018

30’w x 60’l x 20’h
Proposal for: Millennium Park, Boeing Gallery
Proposed materials: blown and cast glass, copper, steel, concrete

2019

12’ w x 12’l x 16’h
Proposal: UIC Engineering College, Art in Architecture
Proposed materials: blown and cast glass, copper, steel, silver

The layperson to science may know of entropy from their own personal experiences, when figuratively speaking order seems to imperceptibly and irreversibly creep into disorder; the house is falling apart, or personal accounting from finances to love gets messy. Entropy is one of the prominent laws governing the universe and in the fields of chemistry and physics is interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in a system.

Entropy requires the passage of time for its evidence to be seen whereas constructing order demands effort. Artists and scientists are creators of order, fashioning the unruly and pesky materials of the universe into forms and inventions that restack the decks of time.

My proposed sculpture: ENTROPY, flirts with crafting the stable object within the arena of the rickety.

Molten glass when shaped and cooled to reflect the moment of making can act like a snapshot. It has the power to “hold” the moment the shape is created, attempting to put a clamp on the Arrow of Time. A fossilized mosquito in amber, a frozen popsicle, photography, the bare cliffs of Death Valley, once molten glass,,,these are things that allow us to re-experience an instance that has passed. One that could have occurred last night or on an eve a billion years ago.

In ENTROPY, molten glass is shaped into forms that draw upon Plato’s Solids; three dimensional shapes where each face is the same regular polygon. Plato theorized these Solids were the building blocks of classical elements; earth, water, air, fire. ENTROPY’S glass sculptures move within and away from this empirical aesthetic to become abstracted and less determined, sharp corners evolve into rounded puddles. Metal fragments are incorporated into the glass; broken rods of steel and copper grids embedded into some of the volumes. The grids distort and blow out to become in-between geometry, married to the viscous matter. The copper grids, silver skins, and steel rods originate from minerals created from the origins of the universe, some minerals native to our planet, others arriving as permanent tourists.

ENTROPY, willfully destroys exposed systems of knowledge. Systems still visible yet transformed and sublimated by the liminal, the other, the heat or the will to alchemically metamorphose.

2015

Proposal for Loop Link Transit Bus Shelter for City of Chicago

In our almost totally digitally infused and organized society, the only evidence of the human is the touch. The presence of the individual is the presence of the mishap the glitch in the system or the error of the hand. There is expression in; the line ruled through computer software, the gravity bound hand-scribing graphite onto paper or the printers’ ink pressed into the weave of a cloth. Yet the gesture or the signature of the mortal hand is what connects us most profoundly to our past and future.

A moiré pattern is a visual byproduct caused by overlaying two identical patterns such as grids or dots. These patterns are often seen as accidental nuisances in the printing field but their effect is unpredictable and visually dynamic. I created a series of moiré patterns by screen printing these ordered lined patterns onto textiles, by hand. The disruptions in the printed patterns are like glitchy drawings that defy the two dimensional boundaries of the plane of cloth, to become spatially dynamic volumes of pattern and line. The hand screen printed fabrics were then digitized and recomposed to create the suite of four artworks for the Loop Link.

Chicago is a new city founded on trade, transportation and commerce. Like so many of its sister cities that rose out of the 19th century, Chicago was built on older forms of production that were traded in the great “pit” of exchange. Commodities and their modes of exchange have both rapidly evolved from that of the brick and mortar to that of the digital and cyber. Our new civic energy often is tied to the accelerating speed and precision offered by the digital. Through dynamic sets of spatial patterns, MOIRÉ explores the complex ecology of Chicago’s evolving political, cultural and economic histories.

The interplay between the hand and the digital, and the textile and the city allow us to contemplate scales of engagement along a spectrum of the personal, the civic and the global. MOIRÉ fully acknowledges the necessity of the digital within contemporary society yet offers an introduction of the glitch as a tool for regenerating a poetics of space.

2015

Chicago Architecture Biennial Lakefront Kiosk Competition
in collaboration with Randall Kober of Anarchitectures

2013

Chicago Ideas Week: Artist in Residence Proposal
400 N. Michigan Ave, Pioneer Plaza

Geometric forms imply both the known and the speculative. They can be called abstract when considered in relationship to the figurative or representational but to mathematicians they are nothing short of perfection and precision. In particular, Platonic forms are three-dimensional maps or formulas, able to answer questions that exceed their own literal form.

These foundational forms have an uncanny ability to act as a chameleon of content, absorbing and reflect back the character of their environment. In Geominatrix, the sculptures reference and reflect the rectilinear logic of the surrounding city but on a scale more aligned with that of the body instead of the monumental. The works have a geometric framework but then melt and mutate in their materiality. A chroma saturated skin flows over the volumes to create a juicy surface that embeds into and supports the form. There’s an appearance of a liquefied sculpture, malleable and in transition. Taught and droopy lines loosely connect the forms, criss-crossing and doubling back, resembling an idiosyncratic spider’s journey.

We have become accustomed to our public spaces as vehicle for banal representational or sterile abstract art. They often offer passersby an un-nuanced reflection of society. The use of geometric solids melting and dissolving in this piece suggests the feminizing of traditional architectural languages while embodying a more dynamic and textured feminist sci-fi utopic attitude. Geometry is also often the constant framework upon which cultures can apply their temporal signature through visual languages such as architecture, sculpture and the decorative arts.

2012

Bloomingdale Trail Proposal, Western Avenue, Chicago

THE WESTERN ARCADE/THICKENED LACE

This Project is an organic response that calls attention to the historic industrial aesthetic of the concrete and steel while invigorating and activating spaces carved out as a byproduct of the re-construction of the Bloomingdale Trail.  It uses the existing brutalist structure to provide a network of interconnected spaces for creative expression, play, social interaction, strolling, and contemplating. The proposed vaulted concrete lace system responds organically to the site, and is adaptable in both scale and purpose. This system provides the signature visual style; it will become an instantly recognizable sign of the trail, much like the Art Nouveau metro stops of Paris. Importantly, this textile-inspired concrete lace creates spaces for people, while providing a decorative, domestic and familiar scale and presence.

Our synthesis will utilize the dominant railroad structure as the substrate for a rhyzomatic plan. Through use of organically informed concrete textile lace, spaces are established for a variety of activities. Spaces include a Play Space, Spectacle Space, Transit Space, Skate Space, and Promenade.

2012

“A man is just in the same way that a state is just.” Plato, The Republic
12th District Police Station Proposal, City of Chicago