“I Made My Bed, Now–“

Installation at Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles, California, September 2016. Variable dimensions with found objects and paper, salt, paperclay, medicine, and fabric.

With special thanks to Dorothy Darker for scenic treatment. Photos by Birdman Photos.

Statement:The installation at “Bruxism”, entitled “I Made My Bed, Now—“, is a contextual companion to the two-dimensional work of the show and a wordless record of how the show’s work was conceived and completed. The installation contains objects used in the completion of the show, such as the scores of pencil nubs strewn on the ground, and a suggestion of the pharmaceutical-based help required for pulling a body and mind through protracted periods of work.

Walls full of text suggest the confused, compulsive mind-space inhabited by the artist, interspersed with the objects of compulsion collected over the years from the streets, trash, and junk shops of New York. They are both sites of memory (either known or intimated), orphans whose worth is rescued in the act of collection, and a womb in which the artist can ensconce herself for protection from the outside and introspection. Names of family members and phrases of secret importance are interspersed with seemingly important photographs of strangers and the detritus of others’ sickness.

Finally, the method in which the installation is composed— half melee, half obsessive order— echoes the artist’s patterns of making, both systematic and random, tied as much to gut-level creative impulse as to anxiety-driven compulsion.

In the upper-left-hand-corner above, you can see the ghost suit that I used in the below video, which was installed elsewhere in the gallery. His name is William. Below video by Gerrit Roessler.