THE MUSEUM SERIES
2018 - Present
The common element in the collages in The Museum Series is the background. Each piece is built on top of an archival color pigment print of a photograph I took on the grounds of art museums.
A few years ago I found myself looking at small details in a variety of built structures on the campuses of museums. We go to see the art in the museums and sometimes admire the architecture of a specific building, but rarely is any attention paid to the skilled laborers who built these structures. I found myself drawn to small, overlooked details that revealed evidence of the human hand involved in the construction of these spaces.
I became fascinated by this visual evidence. The trail of rust from a metal object placed by a worker in an exterior wall or physical marks that were made by anonymous trades people relate to a theme that runs through much of my work, a human presence in our absence.
In this series the line created by paint in a parking garage is more than a simple line. The pencil marks left on a wall associated with a measurement or the concrete pushed into a void all directly relate to individuals tasked with various aspects of construction. These things can be both a dialog between workers or simply part of the process of one person completing a specific task. When I discover them, I find myself in a silent conversation through observation with the construction worker, different from, yet similar to looking at art.
For reasons I cannot explain, I am fascinated by these remnants. Looking for these very subtle elements that are hard to find and were never intended to be documented is a never ending treasure hunt.