Mystical Artifacts Beneath a Microscope

Digital print on plexiglass, charcoal-acrylic-pastel on glassine, metallic thread on silk organza, hand-made papers on glassine

From top: 24 x 36 inches, detail 24x 36 inches, 6×6 inches

Teamed with a researcher as part of the Keck School of Medicine HEAL Program, this project was carried out during the lockdown. I met with Professor Ya-Wen Chen to discuss the work conducted in her laboratory. While her presentation was clearly informative, the daily workings of the lab remain a mystery. That opacity drove my artistic process. After the first of our two meetings, Professor Chen emailed me a photo of a lung organoid that had grown into a heart shape on February 14th. Both lung and heart, I began to grow and multiply this sample onto an imaginary wall. Layered upon these repeated cell motifs are life-size drawings of lungs and their structural protector, the ribcage. Glassine, a semitransparent paper used between pages to shield prints or illustrations, provides the surface for this double-sided drawing. Placed above, metallic strands trace contours of the lungs, trachea, bronchial tubes, arteries and veins and are sutured to a “pleural” silk membrane. From cell to anatomy to breath, each surface is compressed between two layers of acrylic not unlike a microscopic slide, specimen and its coverslip. Informed by Cubism where all sides of an object are flattened against a picture plane, this act of compression and translucency points to a longtime interest in drawing as seeing through to a transcendent other (side). 

Neologos

Cedar. steel, ribbon thread, garment washing instructions

17 x 23 inches

The project addresses issues of corporate branding and identity, consumerism, commodification and its human costs. In the global commodity chain there is no there. Multiple factories in various countries may produce the same article of clothing such that the corporation and its brand/logo supersedes and eclipses the maker, the making and the manufacturer. This project comprises over 50 re-configured washing instructions to examine corporate branding from the methods of manufacture to the theater of purchase. The exhibition finds place for the work of the hand and the making of making.

As museum galleries display artifacts dislocated from their source and function, this installation addresses another displacement—that of the unknown worker and their work, of the making and the garment, of the garment and the factory, of the factory and its unknown address and of the manufacturer and the corporation. This anonymity, this the undisclosed, this presence of absence all beneath the brand is addressed through the texture of a personal lexicon. A(D)dress unknown.

Dyeing Light—Your Undying Presence

Silk organza, sand, resin

Detail, 36 x 32 inches, Overall 10 x 12 feet

30 x 36 inches

Across time and place, hands are washing and hanging to dry; indigenous dance incorporates this gesture.