Shadowbox Project
This project explores the fluidity and unreliability of memory. It is rooted in an ephemeral but resonant childhood memory: a shadowbox-like object made by a childhood friend. To my child-self it was visually startling, magical, beautiful. But Its details remain vague and change every time I try to recall it.
Through repeated failed attempts to recreate the remembered object – as both installations and paintings or small sculptures – I explore the inherent untrustworthiness of what we think we know. The impossibility of the project and the subjective malleability of memory are part of what attracts me to the undertaking. It is a meditation on childhood exuberance, loss, change, and the redemptive possibilities of any creative undertaking, as well as pleasure for its own sake.
The work here is one of several reinventions of the original object. This version is blown up to human scale so it can be wandered through. Evoking the joyful surprise of the original object, the vibrant colors play off of quieter shadows (some of which are real others are trompe l'oeil ).
-Paint, found objects, 2017
Read more about this project and other recent work in this interview