ICARUS SERIES

This show features art made from packaging material that I found in the trash of MIT’s Stata Center (not far from where I work).  Inspired by the material’s suppleness, delicacy and strength, I gave these unrecognized materials alternative personalities of grace and charm. The material floats free from the wall and yet is dependent on it. Here, as in all my art, I treat gravity as a design partner, for as soon as one moves away from the wall, a range of forces come into play (sheer forces as well as compressive or tensile forces) with different materials operating in different ways. The packing material as it turns out has its own internal strength - and majesty of presence - that operates with and against the support structure.  For that reason, these pieces are dedicated to Icarus, normally a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris, but here imagined as yearning for freedom and release against the inextricable tyranny of gravity.This show features art made from packaging material that I found in the trash of MIT’s Stata Center (not far from where I work).  Inspired by the material’s suppleness, delicacy and strength, I gave these unrecognized materials alternative personalities of grace and charm. The material floats free from the wall and yet is dependent on it. Here, as in all my art, I treat gravity as a design partner, for as soon as one moves away from the wall, a range of forces come into play (sheer forces as well as compressive or tensile forces) with different materials operating in different ways. The packing material as it turns out has its own internal strength - and majesty of presence - that operates with and against the support structure.  For that reason, these pieces are dedicated to Icarus, normally a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris, but here imagined as yearning for freedom and release against the inextricable tyranny of gravity.