Series

Voids, 2024-ongoing

shown at Canopy Projects , Austin, TX

This work uses discarded food packaging cast in cement to build a quiet, bodily architecture for framing a physical and metaphorical void. The void left by loosing someone. In the case of this series the void is filled with inherited memories of a loved one I lost.

These concrete “frames“ retain original packaging imprints of “Cryovac”. The command to freeze the memory is almost literal. These consumer-facing messages add a layered irony when paired with hand-painted portraits of wild plants.

“Voids”, 2024

The acetate sheet at the center of the work is encased in a cement frame that feels like an extension of the website’s architecture, providing a small peephole through the white background. The nimble drawing at the center is minimal in its construction but overflowing in the image it conjures. The black lines at once provide a loose, Spaghetti-like definition to the wildflowers, while at the same time suggesting movement lines of wind. These lines do not settle down as one or the other, and as a result the breeze rolling across the scene becomes a part of the definition of the flowers, the two concepts completely intertwined, just for the moment.

The feeling that we are getting a snapshot in time–the immediate impression–is reinforced by the pin-hole construction of the frame. One almost feels compelled to move their head around, like a child looking through a cracked open door, to try to get a better view of the sunny day that must lay just on the other side of the glass.
— by Jack Kelley