I live in an artist community in the industrial district in Lowell, MA. Western Avenue Studios spans several mill structures built during the industrial revolution. These once thriving mill factories gradually closed down and were neglected for decades, slowly decaying and deteriorating. Many were lost as natural forces slowly reclaimed them. A few were stabilized and rescued. For this semester, I was fortunate to reserve one of the remaining, unrestored portions of the building where I have my studio space. The abandonment of infrastructure at the leading edge of technology (The Industrial Revolution) and their subsequent absorption back into the natural landscape embodies much of the atmosphere and materiality I am exploring with my “Remnants” series. I have been spending time in this space for the past several months, experimenting with video and audio in order to capture the ambient energy of the room. My intent is to allow these meditations to infuse my work with a concretized sense of the natural forces I am exploring.
“Remnant 5”, 13′ x 7′ x 3′, canvas painting deconstructed and reassembled, mounted on plastic panels, metal wiring, iron-oxide surfaces treated with acid.
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Hanging sculptural form, 4′ x 1.5′ x 1.5′, metal wire structure with plastic panel inclusions, surfaces treated with rusted iron-oxide
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Installation exploration on deteriorating doorway, 7′ x 4′ x 2′, rusted iron oxide applied to plastic laminate
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Installation Space
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Select photos from the room showcasing the materiality of erosion and decay inherent in the space.
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Below is a video of experimental captures from this space. The manipulation of time in the video and audio is an attempt to displace my own expectations from the human time-scale and to capture both the stillness of geological time as well as the subtle dynamics still at play within this stillness.
Documentation of work in progress
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Spring – Studio Study Reflection
My 2021 Spring semester work, is a continuation of the work I started under José Bedia’s mentorship. At the conclusion of the Fall semester, I reflected on the paintings and assemblage pieces I had created, and I began to see the potential of expanding this work into a three-dimensional realm. Where I was previously seeing my paintings and sculptures as separate, this distinction was now beginning to disappear. This was in part a result of my research into the work of Jack Whitten, Thornton Dial, and Leonardo Drew as well as my initial experimentations with found objects gathered along Lowell’s industrial railroad tracks. The objects gathered in these walks, included rusted track fragments discarded during railroad maintenance, metal scraps left behind by wagons carrying recyclable metal, as well as plastiglomerates created at the center of campfires built by people using these tracks as conduits to move across the country in relative anonymity and safety. These found-objects, infused my work with a historical and emotional charge and materiality, that I had struggled to attain through painting alone. Most importantly I began to see how the themes and historical narrative of Lowell’s transformation through the industrial revolution, paralleled and informed the narrative I was exploring in a modern context.
As I started to work with Magdalena Campos-Pons in the Spring semester, our conversations revolved around ways to expand my visual language and my choice of media, beyond traditional materials, in order to embrace more current forms of expression and immersive experiences. This led to additional research on artistic influences such as El Anatsui, Matthieu Richie, and Fabian Marcaccio. I was also informed by suggested readings from “The Exile’s Return; Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post Modern Era” by Thomas McEvilley, “Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display” by Steven D Lavine, and “Simulacra and Simulation” by Jean Baudrillard. From my conversations and virtual studio visits with Magdalena, emerged a reaffirmation that “rust” as a material was central to my message, and one I needed to continue to embrace and explore. This past semester, rust became the vehicle that tied my narrative to the larger historical narrative of our species. It also became the means to fully embrace the materiality of the story I want to tell.
In this semester’s continued work on “Remnants”, rust represents nature’s reclaiming of our monuments to immortality. Oxidation, is representative of the gradual reclaiming and recycling that is integral to maintaining a natural balance. Our rusted man-made structures and crumbling edifices, reveal the layers of our habitation, dwellings built on the shoulders of older dwellings. This architectural layering is our true monument, not to immortality but to perseverance. The record of our resilience and our struggles, of those that tried to live within nature and those that tried to conquer it, are all compressed and woven back into the layered tapestry of Earth’s geological story.
In this visual language, heavily influenced by researching scenes of war-torn cities, human-induced natural destruction and pollution, rust is a central element, both through the incorporation of found objects and the direct application of iron-oxide on the surfaces. Rust represents erosion, corrosion and the passage of time. Rust links the past, present, and future. In its raw form, iron oxide is a foundational element representative of our potential to harness and transform the natural world. Yet in the surfaces of discarded machinery and architectural ruins, rust exposes the impermanence of our monumental impact and provides an example of how the man-made is reclaimed by nature. We are not separate and above nature. Our technology can not escape, tame or transcend nature.
My other central objective this semester was drawing parallels between the industrial revolution and our present, as a way to contemplate our future. I live in an artist community in the industrial district in Lowell, MA. Western Avenue Studios spans several mill structures built during the industrial revolution. These once thriving mill factories gradually closed down and were neglected for decades, slowly decaying and deteriorating. Many were lost as natural forces slowly reclaimed them. A few were stabilized and rescued. The unrestored spaces remaining from this period, present an opportunity to increase my understanding of how time and erosion affects man-made structures after they have been abandoned.
This semester, I was fortunate to reserve one of the remaining, unrestored portions of the building where I have my studio. The abandonment of a once thriving industrial community at the leading edge of technology and the subsequent absorption of these remnants back into the natural landscape embodies much of the atmosphere and materiality I am exploring in my work. I have been spending time in this space for the past several months, experimenting with video and audio in order to capture the ambient energy of the room. My intent is to allow these meditations to infuse my work with a concretized sense of the natural forces I am exploring. My experimental audio and video captures of this space at varying speeds is an attempt to displace my own expectations from human time-scales and to capture both the stillness of geological time as well as the subtle dynamics still at play within this stillness.
I have spent a great deal of time in this space in quiet contemplation, examining minute details. The flaking off of paint, slowly separating into layers, concealing and revealing different stages of the wall’s history. The fickleness of the high-fired red bricks used in these mill factories. Some bricks remain hard like granite, while others fracture and shed fragments from the constant freeze and thaw cycles, and yet others have completely turned to dust, leavening behind a void with only the frame of cement around it surviving. Everywhere I look, I can find flakes of brick and rusted scales from large iron beams, suspended in cobwebs, slightly dangling in front of where they fell off. All of these discoveries have greatly influenced me and found their way into my work. I consider this space to be an incubation chamber for both the pieces I am building as well as for my evolving message. In this sense, the space is very much part of my work, and the boundary between my forms and the environment is blurred, in the same way that the boundaries of the demise of the industrial revolution in this building merges with the decay I am portraying in my work.
One of the first offshoots from this immersion, has been the transformation of “Remnant 5” from an oil painting into a sculptural installation. The separation and flaking of surface layers in the room along with my ongoing research into Thornton Dial, Jack Whitten, El Anatsui and Leonardo Drew is helping me see how my compositions can break beyond the 2D canvas plane. My instincts have been reinforced by El Anatsui’s description of his pieces not as paintings but as sculptures, having the ability to conform to different arrangements through the articulation of the individual planes. “Remnant 5” was an attempt to capture the geometric complexity of contemporary architectural ruins, along with the juxtaposing planes and angles present in decaying architecture. The vertical layering of structures and artifacts allude to the passage of time, and the fact that we have always built the present on the shoulders of our past and that through the process of decay whenever we abandon spaces, all these chronological layers and their history are exposed, rearranged, and eventually reabsorbed into the landscape.
For my ongoing work this Summer, I plan to continue developing sculptural forms inside this space, finding ways to both feed off and reinforce the atmosphere present in this room. Moving forward into the Fall, I am considering ways in which I could incorporate light projections and ambient audio recordings or musical elements as part of a more immersive installation experience. I am excited about the possibilities of incorporating dynamic media in my installations. I am looking to incorporate audio and animated projections in my installation space, and ultimately, I would want the audio and visual projections to be immersive (I would like to gather sensory data from the room/viewer(s) and have that generate/drive the audio/visual output).
On a final reflective note, I would like to detail some of the highlights of my mentorship with Magdalena. In addition to her in-depth insights and research assignments, Magdalena has been extremely generous and supportive of my cultural roots, research path and career goals. Thanks to her introductions, I am currently in communication with multiple artists and professionals in the Boston area and this past semester, at Magdalena ’s encouragement, I attended a two-week poetry workshop with Richard Blanco, a Cuban-American writer and inaugural poet for President Obama. I am very excited about the possibilities for continued growth and collaboration with these individuals going forward.
Lastly, I also would like to mention that I had a very fruitful and creatively rewarding trip to Miami, last month. I had the opportunity to visit the Perez Art Museum in Miami, showcasing a powerful collection of works by a very diverse group of contemporary artists, including works by Magdalena Campos-Pons and José Bedia. I also had the tremendous experience of visiting José Bedia’s studio and spending time with him and his family. I found our conversation on his own practice, his recent anthropological projects and his feedback on my current work, tremendously inspirational and enlightening. I am very much looking forward to this Summer as well as the Fall semester.