Maintenance and Operations

Maintenance and Operations continues my fascination with industrial functionality. Sculptural installations made primarily of fabric and steel call attention to hidden yet ubiquitous infrastructures designed for maintenance, conveyance or protection. The works emphasize the mysterious beauty in systems contrived purely for utility, such as circuit patterns and conduit pathways.

The work was started at the Jentel residency in Wyoming in the summer of 2012. Inspired by the Wyoming geology as well as the markers of industry seen in the landscape on the drive there, the structures started at the residency became infused with references to geological strata, attempting to draw a connection to the raw resources that all technological innovations have ultimately come from. I find humor and tenderness in the randomly customized structures from the real world that the artworks refer to, as well as in my own labor in emulating them out of fabric.

The employment of organic treatments, using dirt and rust on silk and canvas, subverts the authority of institutional systems and exposes a softness, even frailty, in the calculated infrastructures that our society has come to depend on.