Bones, plastic shards, and fishing collected along the shoreline
wood, bone, twine, leather, plastic, 30” x 12” x 12”, 2019
The works in Confluence aspire to embody the chaos and intricacy of those transfigured objects.
wood, bone, twine, leather, plastic 30” x 12” x 12”, 2019
They are amalgams of natural and synthetic elements.
wood, bone, twine, leather , plastic 30” x 12” x 12”, 2019
Entwined by methods drawn from net making, basketry, and needle lace, they balance suggestions of craft and accrual, and of human agency and complicity.
bone, plastic, thread, 7 1/2” xx 5” x 3”, 2014
They reflect the unnerving beauty and ambiguity that lured me to reclaim the discarded matter and to consider the implications of such a conversion.
plastic, fishing line, 7” x 16” x 7”, 2019
plastic, fishing line, 16” x 20”, 2013- 2019
Troves of colorful plastic fragments were scattered like confetti along the beach. Upon close inspection, I could see that the sun and salt had hewn their surfaces, producing subtle, organic textures in a broad spectrum of colors.
plastic, fishing line, 16” x 20”, 2013- 2019
They reminded me of the red, blue, and green sea glass that my mother and I eagerly gathered along the shore when I was young. We displayed our treasure in jars on the window sill to catch the sunlight.
wood, twine, steel, found objects, dimensions variable, 2019
The interlaced sculptures in the exhibition Confluence, germinated from materials gathered 5 years ago, while in residence at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon coast. The man-made beach debris was abundant that spring, having crossed the ocean on currents carrying wreckage from the Tsunami that had hit the northeastern coast of Japan in 2011.
wood, twine, steel, found objects, dimensions variable, 2019
In planning this exhibition for the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA, I was inspired to incorporate the prominent columns in the Side Gallery. Drift visualizes a ghost vessel I encountered on Lincoln Beach being swept across the convergence zone by the powerful Kuroshio “Black Current” and North Pacific Currents.
wood, twine, steel, found objects, dimensions variable, 2019
I encountered many troubling but beautiful examples of the sea’s capacity to reform and ornament refuse. The small fishing boat had survived its long journey across the Pacific intact, but it’s once smooth contours were now heavily festooned with goose barnacles. Turbulent weavings of fishing line and buoy, driftwood and kelp regularly emerged at low tide.