STAND IN SERIES

'Afternoon Gone South' Stand In Series. Found objects, shelf, legend. Digital composite. 24 x 24 x 3" 2022

'Afternoon Gone South' Stand In Series. Found objects, shelf, legend. Digital composite.

I've been working quite vigorously on a new series that began about a decade ago with three pieces. The project is called Stand In and it's basically poems in things.

In a solo exhibition opening on Saturday September 17th on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, I will share several new pieces in this series, along with two other brand new, related bodies of work - puffy paintings and peg drawings. What I'm sharing here is a little peek at a few Stand In sculptures. At the opening from 4-6:30, Suite 1, 7885 Jackson Road, Ann Arbor MI Sat. Sept 17, I will also be raffling off one copy of NOWISH, the 2023 Calendar that I make a very small edition of valued at $50...so come with your lucky rabbits foot!

Each sculpture has three component parts: the base structure, assembled objects, and a legend, like the legend on a map. This legend translates between static objects and lived experience that never stops moving.

​Here's the Project Statement. 
These conceptual, sculptural works are found object assemblages used to express ineffable, personal experiences. Sometimes, the experiences mapped through these objects are poignant and moving; sometimes they are awkward and difficult, and or hard to recollect at all.  Fleeting occurances like a wink, the last visit with someone, or an interaction, are broken down into its aspects, and paired to each object. 

In a sense this work is about presence: the presence in objects, and the way presence opens up and closes down in the course of living a life, or the movement through a day. 

I made this series after witnessing humans in that experience of being separated from their things. It's for me both an exploration of the lives of things, their histories as companions in our homes, and their fate in junk shops and land fills. This human inevitability of parting with what we care for and hold closest, as well as my own fascination with all the 'stuff.'  I'm interested in the inside/outside delineation in human experience, what we don't know of another's life, and what's laid open to be seen. Also, what we often can't fully register - those moments - as they happen in our own.  

These works, presented via  garlands, shelves and spindles, generally are under two feet in their largest dimensions. Larger site specific, temporary versions are also in development and I welcome invitations to collaborate with a space and one's 'things.' The work is both the sculptural assemblage and the legend that accompanies it. 

This project first began in 2014, and continues today. ​
​As a side note I've noticed that labels and legends are an integral part of several of my projects. These include the projects Offering Shelf and Fresh Eyes and Attendant. Stand Ins between words and forms also happens in all three books of prayer.

'Thrum.' Stand In Series. Found objects, wooden support, legend. 14 x 22 x 4" 2022.

'Thrum'. Stand In Series. Found objects, wooden support, legend. Digital composite. 2022.

This may sound complicated but it's in fact fairly simple. It's a little like reading the book Goodnight Moon in that it's about pattern recognition and the ridiculousness of a cluster of strange objects.

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Mending Project. Stand In Series. Found objects, cotton twine, legend. 15 x 18 x 2" 2022.

'Mending Project.' Stand In Series. Found objects, cotton twine, legend. Digital composite 2022.

I'm noticing as I make these new pieces that there are certain things that are being illuminated in the poems, and certain things being illuminated in the objects. I'll share some of the themes here. In the poems, what's being described are the things that we tend to miss because they are hard to pin down. Things that are either so mundane that we don't even really register them: Like the times we're alone in between events. It's easy to not even be conscious of that happening at all. Or the times when we have an awkward situation with another person, or an intimate moment that's either welcome one or unwelcome, with a stranger or with someone we love. Also, those moments that are big, poignant and memorable, as well as tender, vulnerable and fleeting, are represented in specific pieces in this series.


The objects also have themes in them as well: they are domestic and often incongruous with one another. They invoke for me a kind of play, a balance, and a kind of jumble. The color palette, texture and overall form of them are composed with a lot of consideration.


I may propose a residency with one of the junk shops because I'm there so often and I'm also kind of curious what exactly I'm doing there. What I find I'm doing is sifting through the evidence of other people's lives and the visible way in which a place like that holds evidence of lives that have either been interrupted by events or where a decision was made to declutter and clear out. Some of the objects that I'm selecting were parts of unfinished craft projects or perhaps were part of a life from another era.


Our lives are so full of things. This is stuff we can't take with us when we die or when we go through transitions that we didn't ask for. These pieces are a way to both honor those objects and the quiet little relationships others have had with them in a home: to translate them with what's going on really behind them and through them. I've heard it said that

Matter is a way of seeing, not something that is seen.

I've also sat with the interesting idea that

Objects are something to think with.

​The first comes from a non dual philosopher Rupert Spira, and the second comes from Seymour Papert, a child psychologist who invented logo programming for children. Both of these individuals share a certain brilliance, and I think this work is an expression of both of these ideas. Seeing this all as metaphor for something else: Isn't that in some ways what life really is? To put it differently, if this is your dream, isn't everything in a dream a metaphor standing in for something else.

If you are local, come to the opening and try your luck at the raffle! We're a small operation, so it'll be good odds in your favor!

And if you want to reserve your calendar - or for any other reason - drop me a line or leave a comment below. 

The gallery will be open by appointment , and for events on October 8 3-6, and for the closing on Oct 22. Masks are strongly encouraged and please do not join us if you are sick.



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