Re(conscious)ed 2014 Plate with black & white inkjet transfer paired with artist's dialogue.
The work stems from something in my past that haunts my present. This work deals with personal hesitation when dealing with sexuality. I have yet to own my position as a lesbian, someone who enjoys looking at women. Re(conscious)ed is a two-fold piece consisting of a sculptural visual and a sound element. The visual of the piece are my dinner plates that I have LaserJet transferred images of naked ladies that I searched the Internet for, finding just the right ones. The process of transferring consists of adhering the LaserJet black and white copy face to face with the plate making only the blank side of the paper visible, in order to see the lady again I have to wet the plate and rub the paper off. As I was rubbing to see them again I began to think about who they were and where they came from. I came up with a world in which each of the ladies lived in that was all their own. These stories are where the sound element comes in. These stories make the women on the plates human again and give them a life they didn't have before as only images. The sound relates to a longing I have and the guilt that goes along with that longing; Guilt that I enjoy looking at women and these images and a guilt a guilt that I feel pressure not to. Each plate has a unique story and different stories function differently.
The plates are used to think about domestic spaces and personal interactions we have at the dinner table. How I can never have dinner alone again as long as I have these plates.
For the display a single plate sits at a table with a chair in front of it and the viewer would sit down and then pick up the headphones while gazing at the plate. The interaction needs to one on one and isolate the viewer so that it is only the viewer looking rather then a group 'look' or one in which the viewer is being looked at while he is looking.
Sibling 2014 Audio "1921" The Who rerecorded on cassette tape paired with noose made from amp cable
Sibling consists of a guitar amp cord and my tape player playing 1921 by The Who from the album 'Tommy' for 45 minutes. For this piece I practiced and tried to tie a noose knot with an amp cable. This gesture was reenacting my bothers first suicide attempt. When he tried he failed because audio cables do not like to be tangled up and will fight against the tension of the knot. I struggled and took the time and tried several times until I could make a noose that had the potential to be used. I pared the song to represent the tension and sweetness of intimacies. The song was rerecorded manually on a cassette tape until it filled one side of a 90 minute tape.
Dis(comforter) 2013 Sound installation, Blanket with audio
lay down to listen
Clip from 12 minute audio This blanket contains a voice; a body and entity that exists outside of a physical body. This voice invites the viewer to lay down on the blanket and absorbs it. The audio is composed of anxieties about being gay and relationships both familial and sexual.
Subcording 2013 Audio placed in ballon, 6 audio cassette pieces
The audience is invited to interact with the balloon and absorb a voice through their own skin. Skin to skin and filtering the audio through touch. Audio component is constructed of recordings of memories that have been transferred back and forth using digital representing the present and analog tape representing the past.