Page 27 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II
P. 27
What new materials did you use?
With wood being my primary material,
and I have used glass in many forms
over the years, as well as video
components, I suppose the newest
material is steel, which provided a
counter against the layers of sheet
glass in one piece (Cenotaph). Also, as
a deaf person, I don’t often consider
sound in my work, but the sound of a
bronze bell ringing signifies the death of
an elephant — it rings every 15
minutes, which is when an elephant is
killed for its tusks. I might add, that the
Bell Shrine was all made of wood that
was salvaged from a defunct rifle
factory — all the wood was shaped like
rifle gunstock — and it felt great to cut
those things apart and make the pieces
work for my shrine.
How was the experience? How does that relate to the subject matter?
The materiality of the wood, the glass, the steel all have emotive qualities that lend
themselves to the individual pieces. The process also plays a part — I remember just
sobbing over the loss of one of the largest living “tuskers” — he was shot and killed for
his massive tusks and I had designed the elephant masks to be made of smaller pieces
of wood, and stitching them together — the process and method of fabricating this work
became cathartic as I was stitching these parts together — hearing the bell ring in the
