(audio and video excerpts)
Growing up
Installation
Looping video projection, audio track, running time: 2hrs 21mins
2012
Created for an exhibit titled $1000 Reward for the 20 Foot Santa Claus at 17 Cox Gallery and then reinstalled at the Atomic Cafe in Beverly, MA.
Children are taught to believe in St. Nick as a figure that has the potential to make dreams come true on Christmas morning. As they grow, they discover that this is folklore and thus a little bit of that childhood magic disappears. This passage from belief to reality happens over and over as we grow and learn and change.
The video footage is taken from Youtube and consists of home movies of families interacting with Santa and opening gifts on Christmas morning. The audio is taken from recorded conversations with the baristas at the local cafe where I worked through college.
(performance documentation; video from within the classroom, audio from within the cafe)
Two places
Performance
two laptops, live video projection, duration:1hr
2011
I was in school in Boston while living and working in Beverly, MA at a local café. I was taking a class titled, Performance Projects that met twice per week, six hours per day, for two semesters.
In the spring of the second semester, it became increasingly difficult for me to make art, to keep up with school work, and to bridge the gap between my academic life and my home life. This piece was built to fail. It was my attempt to be in two places at once. I went to class for the first 3 hours, caught a train, and for the second half of the day I worked a shift at the café.
A laptop was set up in the classroom and the screen was projected onto the wall. I placed another laptop on a shelf in the café. The two were connected via Skype. There were attempts to communicate through text message but ultimately I couldn’t focus and the communication broke down. A classmate made an attempt to message me during the critique and class discussion, but I was unable to respond to or read until I took my evening break. My colleagues were frustrated and I was stressed.
Messy and fragmented, the piece was meant to be a documentation of the interaction between two parts of myself.
Mother
Installation
Looping audio track, booklets
2010
Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, NY for an exhibit titled The Future is Now!
The parents of artists are the creators of those creating. At an opening reception, my mother approached one of my colleagues and spoke to him for over an hour about her life and mine. Reflecting on my mother’s storytelling, I attempted to draw a connection from the way in which families influence the formation of our personalities to the development of artistic practice.
I wrote a small book about myself, my family, and my artwork told in the voice of my mother. The book begins with the text ‘The artist’s mother approaches you in the gallery, she tells you this…’ Multiple copies were left on a table and available for people to take as they entered the space. The looping audio track is a recording of a phone conversation between my mother and I.
Regulars
Airpot of coffee, sugar, milk, stirrers, lids, paper cups with labels
2010
An introduction of one circle to another. My classmates meet my coffee and the people who drink it.
This work exists in the space between school and work. Employee-customer relationships exist in a gray area between stranger and friend. Each cup corresponds to a different customer at the cafe where I worked through college. They are labeled with a name, the food or drink most commonly purchased and my own observations. My classmates were invited to choose a cup and drink the coffee while reading about these regulars.