Shadows

Eyes Mirrors Boxes Follies

In the title of my show at MorYork the word "Boxes" should come first because the "Boxes" came first. That category includes my oldest work dating from the 1980s. The box constructions were mostly assembled in the late 80s although parts of the contents were made in the 1970s. Those early box contents include small sewn pieces which I created by making sheets of acrylic medium, stretching them, and stuffing them, like little pillows. "Pillows" makes them sound cushy and comforting but they're a bit creepy and absurd too like David's Lynch's Eraserhead: the baby. The arylic sheets I made are skins albeit acrylic skins so it's a bit like embalming or taxidermy. The box that appears to contain a shrunken blue head is the head of David Bowie. I made the skin from a printed album insert from Bowie's Alladin Sane. It's his head. It's so painted over you can't tell but he's in there.

Photographing my boxes has always been a challange. The first challange is that I'm aiming directly at a pane of glass which is naturally going to show my reflection. So I've had to be tricky about photographing that work. And with anything three dimensional there are any number of ways to light them which naturally changes the look of the piece especially when it is a shadow box. Of course that's also what makes them interesting to look at, always different, from different angles, different times of day. In future posts I'll include others from this tall series of boxes and my horizontal format boxes which were made in the 1990s. Stay close.