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-I think
how buildings are built is fascinating.
I definitely find beauty in scaffolding
and layering of linear qualities.
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I am an interdisciplinary artist
that primarily works in site specific installation.
I was really drawn
to rapidly changing urban environments
and wanted to figure out a way that I could talk about them
and the temporality of the environment we're living in.
Even though I've lived in the city
for 18 years almost. Urban environments to me
are still in some way like this new and different
experience, especially as Seattle is transforming.
Most of my work over the last couple of years
has been about creating a structure cut out of paper;
so it's a void, it's an empty space.
The image itself is empty, but yet we see it.
So I'm just kind of interested in how absence plays
an important role in talking about a quickly changing city.
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As buildings get taller and the neighborhoods get denser,
and we’re, you know, traversing construction sites.
How do we interact with our
the world around us differently?
Do you feel smaller and more sort of constrained by it,
or is that exciting and amplified?
I was really thinking a lot about how buildings that are
built today are really rigid and all the lines are straight
and everything is very perfect and there's parallel lines
and perpendicular lines,
and I've just really kind of pursued a visual language
to talk about the superstructures and
the architectural frameworks that are around us.
In my installation at MAD Art, “The Presence of Absence,”
I used primarily hand-cut paper, wood...
I used some matte mylar
for its translucency and some parchment.
All of the paper pieces are hand-cut, using a Number 11
X-Acto Blade and a straight edge.
I cut on a wall, so I spend a lot of time doing this,
and each piece takes about 20 hours to cut.
As each small section is cut out,
it releases and then over time reveals the larger image.
And that last cut is always
really satisfying because that's
when the paper falls down and the space is revealed.
In a lot of my projects, I use light as a material
and often
that applied light that I have a lot of control over.
Because this exhibition was in the summer,
and I wanted to really focus
on the natural light in the space
and how it would interact with the works.
And one of the big challenges for me was figuring out
where the light would be strong,
how it was going to move over the course of the summer,
and what happens when it's a cloudy day.
So there was this additional layer
that changed throughout the day,
depending on when you visited.
And for me that was a new way of working
because I didn't have control, but I felt like it was
another layer that was really beautiful and dynamic.
During times of day when the sunlight would project
through the paper structures,
that image would project onto the floor and almost feel
like a building or a cityscape in its own.
And this like soft, glowing light, that as the sun moved,
the projection would get longer and more stretched out.
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We all have opinions about change
and it takes a while to adjust to them.
But I think for me, I just I hope that people see what
what's interesting about this moment in time
that is a moment of transformation
where we see the inside of buildings,
we see scaffolding, we see structures being built,
and it won't always be like that.
Eventually these buildings will be complete.
So what does it mean to interact with those
and be more aware of the qualities of our surroundings?
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