I Don’t Know the Details

The work is comprised of sculpture and prints.  While the materials and execution vary, the meaning of the work is consistent: the failure of language to adequately describe trauma, which is the gulf between the experience of tragedy and the attempt at its articulation.

The sculpture was assembled from pieces of furniture that were selected for their spare, anonymous style. The simple informality of the objects suggests the past without nostalgia; they are cultural symbols of the American family. The casing of several of the pieces are cut open exposing the interior stuffing or framework, an expression of a fascination with how things are constructed and an allusion to inner conflict. The body is suggested not only in the work itself but also because the viewer is invited to engage with it by bending to look through holes or slices.

The prints, like the sculpture, reflect memories of traumatic events and experiences.  There are references to disturbances that are personal, public and historical. The landscape of chairs was made after the Indonesian Tsunami.  The series was also built on the trauma that accompanied Hurricane Katrina. The chairs not only stand in for human bodies but also represent the detritus of human lives that have been swept aside in a terrifying and sudden cataclysmic event.  While natural disaster was one motivation, the piles of objects also call to mind lives that have been disrupted by events as large as war or as intimate as the upheaval that accompanies tragic illness.