Everything We Knew Is Wrong
Statement
May 2012
For the past year I have been meditating on the still life. Images of domestic objects have a symbolic relationship to ideas of home life and family relationships. I am particularly interested in the process of departing from previously accepted ideals of domestic life as one moves out of childhood and through adult life. The traumas and delights of this transition are embodied in Everything We Knew Is Wrong.
These sculptures are an exploration of objects as alchemical materials, destruction as a means to creation, and visualization of a shifting vision of reality. The elements included are composed of objects arranged and exposed to heat. Melting glass around other familiar objects is a way of incinerating material while simultaneously preserving the remnants within; both cathartic and sentimental. I choose materials based on memories from childhood and my desire to exert collisions between chance and ritual, violence and domesticity, abjection and fragility. The transformation of domestic objects becomes an analogue between the mutation of materials and the human psyche. The outcome of each process is a type of beauty: relief from the trauma of the process. Our experience of ultimate reality, truth, is not fixed. It is flexible. Who we are and how we view the world is in constant metamorphosis; sometimes appearing to disintegrate only to ascend as a new paradigm. This is reflected in my sculptures as objects are melted and crumbled flat but are reasserted in new way.