Wood scraps (laser engraved), broken bottle glass (worked molten)_15.5" x 5.5" x 4.5"_2017
Lost Works is a developing series of sculptures that recreate "no longer extant" artworks now presumably in landfills, or in some other form.
Elemental Sculpture was made in reference to a lost Robert Rauschenberg sculpture of the same title. Rauschenberg would encourage viewers to take the twenty stones on top of the block of wood and arrange them "in ways that were not interesting." For this piece, shards of broken glass were collected from the artist’s then Chicago-based studio neighbourhood, made molten, and shaped into geologic stones. The wooden block was made from waste wood laminated together with wood glue, and laser-engraved with a bark texture on four sides.
Kentucky Bluegrass sod, Xtreme Green Grass Paint_24” x 48” x 5”_2015
Grass Painting is the first in a series of “Lost Works” made from ‘no longer extant’ pieces in art history. The work is in direct dialogue with Robert Rauschenberg’s lost Growing Painting from 1953 for the Stable Gallery in New York. Rauschenberg came with a watering can to tend to the work daily, with the notion that if the grass were to die, so too would the painting. The paint used for Grass Painting was developed in California for use in making drought-affected lawns green. The grass used for Grass Painting is Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) - an invasive grass species in the prairies that acts as a carpet blocking out other kinds of diverse growth, which has metaphorical resonance with colonial legacies.