Alright, sustainability, urban configurations, I'm also as an educator I'm interested in
conceptual art as a minimalist practice, so what you're looking at here is paper pile
at the University of Chicago, where intercepting the paper collection over a two month period
the paper pile began to grow, so not really kind of using it as an intervention space,
but also allowing the space of education or the viewer to see the accumulation of shredded
paper in an institution, and so what was kind of interesting is that at the end of the paper
pile is that it actually kind of overtook the gallery space and people could not enter,
and that was one of kind of the living legacies if you will, because it became a living painting,
not only by, because we did not lay the paper down ourselves, we just employed the sanitation
people to do it, and so it was kind of like we were just kind of intercepting the gallery
became like the dump, and the viewer became more educated by that, also at the University
of Chicago what was interesting is that they had an amazing collection of Herman Miller
chairs, but they could not sell them, but they allowed the use of kind of reinterpretation
of what these objects were, and so as an artist, as a sculptor interested in kind of ideas
of green sustainability, warp weft, urban configurations, all these kind of buzzwords being used in
here tonight, is that just creating a landscape, kind of a living landscape, as if it's emulating
the built environment, the urban realm, I'm not an architect, I'm not an urban planner,
but I am an artist and I want to be an architect, so you know, what can I say, and then the
next image, come on, yeah, speaking of living painting, so cutting a hole in a gallery wall,
the museum hated it, but that's okay, you know, so this becomes a living painting because
it's left up over a period of four months, and there we see a blossom, you know, from
the kind of October trees all the way through, there I am in an office, but also making the
gallery space not a gallery, but more as kind of an urban space for other people, is offering
a free internet service to people who might just be walking by, it's kind of a socially
based practice, that's a really bad picture of me, but that's okay, so everything there
is rented, everything there is, kind of goes back into the production of recycling, more
kind of studio work, always interested in recycling and sustainability, everything here
is made out of paper, that has been kind of cast off in a dumpster outside of where I
live, and so using my own kind of living dwelling space as a gallery space, becomes more kind
of institutionalizing myself in a way by kind of masquerading as the museum or as the ideal
gallery space, it's just that I'm kind of crouched down here and I'm taking a photo,
bad pixelation on that, I didn't know that, so everything is paper, everything is kind
of suspended and kind of an illusion, so here again is kind of ideas of the city, ideas
of the city also kind of expend to Rem Koolhaas and sustainability, this is a mock up for
a floor, it's an a plexiglass box, but collecting all of these kind of objects of plastic, I
don't know what you would call them, just everything that we buy, the pieces entitled
junk space, so obviously there's a reference, the tempest as a public artist or as an artist
interested in public space, the tempest at Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington, an excellent
collaboration with two other artists, Michael McNichol and Linda Beaumont, it's a lighting
piece that Major League Baseball did not want, but that's okay, it's art so they have to
get it anyway, and so what it is, it's 1500 clear resin baseball bats made out of recycled
milk bottles, yes, and so working with a distributor in Kansas City, Missouri to recompose this,
but the idea of the piece is fractal geometry, et cetera, et cetera, kind of more coming
more to architecture, you know, my dream job is implementing, being selected as an artist
to work on a project where the architect said you can do anything in the building, but don't
touch the glass, and I was like okay, well that's what I want to do, so it became like
a five year battle, but what was really kind of exciting is that at the very end the architect
actually kind of claimed the piece, so there's kind of this interesting duality of collaboration
if you will, with the idea of map making, sustainable inks and processes, all fabricated
in Germany, which is not sustainable I realize, but you know, you can't have everything, and
this piece is in Tacoma, Washington, also along the lines of sustainability, horrible
word overused, but I'm trying to kind of grasp a new vocabulary is where this convention
center is, was 120 years old, everything was kind of torn down, erasure if you will, but
these beams that are floating within the space were the original beams that were holding
up the warehouse, so the whole work is about trees, the legacy of forestry, you know, which
has all been kind of erased within the city of Tacoma, sad but true, and there you are,
a very nice close up, isn't that nice, yeah, so actually these trees glow in the dark,
and so also being shortlisted as a design team artist, which is kind of a more of a
West Coast phenomena than it is an Atlanta phenomena as I've realized, is that the architect
said, you know, I'm really busy, let's just do something really quick and easy, and I
was like, oh, so you're not really, you don't have time, that's great, because I'll take
over, so everything you see here, from the shelter to these kind of land berms of recycled
glass and concrete, zero escaping, everything on the entire project, it's a bus turnaround
of all things, but bus turnarounds have to look pretty too, and so here we are, looking
at recycled glass, looking at natural indigenous plantings, and so why is our, you know, our
built world so bland, beige, and boring, that is my question, that is the thing that I always
try to conquer, and I think that art and artists can actually kind of implement new ideas into
that kind of bland, beige-ness, and I think that Atlanta, sorry to say, kind of needs
a little more artist help here, so looking down on the piece at night, it's a lighting
piece of course, and the crushed glass, recycled glass, all found on site, because it was a
city dump, sparkles very beautifully, mm-hmm, there you are.
