October 2019
Over the course of the last five years, almost immediately after a traumatic brain injury, I began picking up rusted objects. Brain healing, no explanation for what I started to do during that time, that I now cannot stop. Location agnostic, sliding things into my bag, anywhere I walk. (I have a blown-out bottom of a garage can too, for perspective.) Shapes beckon my eyes, I don’t “look”, it’s like they scream at my eyeballs. A long path to now, for me, and the objects. Them discarded, me re-routed. The pieces lie in my studio, in-wait. I had no plan. As my practice, process and work evolved, I knew I wanted to make these sculptures, but didn’t have the skills. The night before my first Introduction to Welding class, the instructor suggested I bring some of my pieces to work on. Overwhelming idea since I hadn’t worked with these pieces and hadn’t thought about what work I would create. As I worked in the studio shop, we began solving the fabrication. Having never worked in 3D, my perspective shifted. Depth was now a consideration as was how to have them presented. After my time in the studio shop, I was walking to the subway, when I saw a piece of wood on the street, rusted nails. It was probably 9 feet long. I knew I wanted it as a base, but didn’t have a saw, because, who does when one is walking around Brooklyn, and honestly, I haven’t used a saw since I made my tree house on the farm, many years ago. I rode back to get it the following day, saw in my bag. I placed it on my bike, and walked it up to a random table thrown out in a somewhat desolate street. I set up shop. There too, I found more wood with rusted nails. I went back to the studio shop for the final session for fabrication, laden with wood and a different piece I thought to make. The Ephemeral Garden formed. Forever capturing flowers and their life cycles, these forming as flora, giving permanence to something otherwise dying, is only natural. These capture the inverse relationship of rusted detritus and floral lifecycles as an Ephemeral Garden.
