Continuum, 2019, Pine, foam, Carex stricta, steel, rope

Installed at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, “Continuum” is an abstracted representation of the Delaware river, as it runs from Hancock, New York to the mouth of the Delaware Bay. Made in collaboration with Anna Van Voorhis, we created a microcosm of the waterway’s verdant potential, constrained as it is by human influence. We were interested in the idea of the river as a continuous mass of life, connected from its headwaters all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean. This abundance of life is represented by the thicket of tussock sedge (Carex Stricta), creating a structured mass of greenery in the water between the docks

Three’s a crowd, 2019, Ash, rope

An investigation in how to elegantly disrupt a space, Three’s a Crowd fills a spacious, well-lit gallery with three mostly useless swings. None can be used without banging into the others. At the same time, the seats invoke the precious qualities of someone else’s nice furniture, adding another level of prohibition to use.

What happens inside it, 2019, Inkjet prints, four pack of Tennents lager, chipboard pallet, stone, ductwork, steel mesh, vinyl flooring, acetate, steel framing studs, picture frames, custom bound books

This space is an amalgam of spaces I visited and lived in while in Scotland, including two bothies in Cairngorms National Park and my flat in Dundee. The space is meant to investigate the notion of intentionality within the built environment, as well as ideas of repurposing, reuse, and self-building. The windows plastered on the walls look out onto a picturesque vista with a house nestled deep in the valley, but they all show the same image, the house cut away to leave the land empty. They act like ganged up concert posters, advertising the idea of being out “there” on your own. The pervasive presence of capitalistic objects used either to perform some function (beer can stove) or to stand in for the “pure” thing which cannot be replicated in the gallery (wood patterned plastic flooring) counters this temping and woefully ignorant narrative of heroic separation. Even when you are “out there”, there is no escaping the presence of humanity. You don’t even have to look very closely, most of the time, to find ruins, trails, cairns. It is a dangerously intoxicating thing to feel apart from and unreliant on society. The feeling can trap you and reel you in to your own ego quickly and silently.

Evergreen, 2019, salvaged Christmas trees, steel, cable, sprayable rubber, video

Walking through New York City on December 26th is a funny experience. Heaps of Christmas trees are piled on every street, the detritus of houses ready to move on from the holiday. I couldn’t stop thinking about the life cycle of these trees, grown for years to be cut down and decorated for a few days, before being unceremoniously discarded. When I got home, I started visiting the local dump and taking home old Christmas trees. I wanted to memorialize the triviality of their existence and disposal. I recorded myself carefully removing each of their limbs one by one, a sort of surgical dance which started out with the tree dwarfing me, but ended with just an thin, bare trunk in my hands. Then I covered the trunks with black rubber in a (futile) attempt to seal up the trunks, and hung them from a steel support. Now the trunks hang like so many sides of beef jerky, waiting for someone to notice them.

Place(holder), 2019, Concrete, ash, roofing cement

In Place(holder), three dead ash trunks have been embedded in a concrete form similar to a jersey wall. It is a tomb, a fence, a weight, a potted plant. I covered the top of the concrete and the bases of the trees in roofing cement as if they were part of a structure that needed to be secured and waterproofed. The piece can only be moved with a pallet jack or forklift.

Message Box, 2019, plywood, paint, school desk legs, existing landline phone

While poking around some empty rooms at my school, I found a landline that was still active in an office that hadn’t been used in years. The phone couldn’t call out without a code, which I didn’t have, but it could be reached by the number written on the side of the box. So, I created a container for the phone to no one, and pulled it out into the hallway to advertise it’s presence. Still connected to it’s outlet, the phone can be called at the number below. Maybe someone will answer.

612.625.8507

Five and a half minutes, 2019, Pine drywall studs, steel drywall studs, drywall, hickory, pine, butternut, shelf brackets, window, paint

In Five and a half minutes, the layers of an imaginary amalgamated building are smashed together, stacked up on top of each other. Multiple thresholds and windows are lost within the mass of wall. I’m trying to capture the feeling of an old building that is continually being updated, built out, compressed, reinvented and simultaneously forgotten. Five and a half minutes refers to Mark Z Danielewski’s book House of Leaves, in which the phrase is used to describe an infinite hallway within a finite house.