The “Meat Market” Series
Meat Market 2009
This installation examines how the relationship of Art to the viewer and gallery relates to that of the bar scene and Meat industry trade. Works are intentionally life size, creating an intimacy with the works when “mingling” through them. They have been installed in both windows and galleries, adjusting the amount of pieces in the installation and the height they are hung at to fit the space they exhibit in.
The works themselves are simultaneously paintings, sculptures, abstract and representational. Works are made from scraps of painted paper and canvas that has been twisted, tied and sewn together with raw canvas and cloth. Traditionally framed works from my Dead Painting series are literally “butchered” by being stabbed, cut and torn to create the three dimensional forms.
“Come Undone”
Combining the techniques of weaving scraps of painted canvas and paper together from the Brooklyn: An Art Community series and the installation techniques of Meat Market these pieces hang freely from the ceiling and let gravity create their curves and ultimate form. They are meant to be able to exist alone or as a grouping where they create a curtain-like form that hides their individuality and turns them into a single work. This can be created to fit any space, hang freely or hang all the way to the floor letting the loose pieces touch the ground.
Artists are encouraged to create series and bodies of work. Here I have created a series of works that can disguise itself as one, or one work that is secretly many. In hanging as one, I am undoing the thought process and work of creating a series. In hanging individually, they become a set, and return to closer resembling a series of paintings, undoing the impact and statement of a larger more sculptural work.
By using the woven method of creation, I give nod to my Brooklyn: An Art Community series, further investigating the point that it is often the Arts themselves that are the “undoing” of a neighborhood. Furthermore, they are an exaggeration of the woven surface of canvas, and the unraveling of the form of the painting.
