Cooper Union Hometest

Prompt 1- A compostion of Three Objects in Water

 Inspired by the phrase "Water-Volcanoe Flower" in a passage on war in Guignol's Band by Celine. I made a structure of scaffold, with a roof of perforated aluminum covered by plastic shade cloth, I stood on a ladder and poured water on top, and it distributed it to produce slow rain drops. The unfired clay forms were attached with string to the roof. The clay forms were filled with pomegranite flower pedals with a drop of white ink in them. When drops hit the ink they exploded, and the the clay forms overflowed with water into the lower levels. I wanted to make something that had a vulgarity to its beauty, like the phrase.

Prompt 2 - Portrait of a face that represents the entire body

I have no picture here, because of the time constraints. I made a drawing on canvas by pounding rusted bailing wire and carbon paper with a hammer. The image was of a head. My dad's friend was walking through the nieghborhood a few years ago and saw CSI investigators by the railroad tracks. A female investigator pulled up from behind white sheets a dislocated head being held by it's hairs. The head I drew is an illustration of this event.

Prompt 3 - A view into a space you cannot enter

I have always been interested in the jail across the street from the Icehouse, a building that I grew up in in Downtown Phoenix. The idea that it was containing humans, makes me think that it is about to burst. I tried to do a piece based upon the meditations a prisoner would have and how he would remember or call to mind the outside world obscured to him. The first image is of the Jackson St jail entrance where people wait for loved ones to be released. I second image did not load, it is actually a sound recording, I recorded planes going overhead, the jail is on the flight path, and then I replayed that recording in a concrete room on the second floor at the icehouse, and then I made another live recording. This was done because inside the jail, or inside your head, the sounds you hear are only echoes of the outside. The last picture is of a rubbing I made with carbon paper of the asphalt street at the intersection between the Icehouse and the jail. This document I believe represented the idea of space, what is physical space when held as a memory, it is now free of geometry, it is ever-expanding, the carbon paper form resembles the universe. This is conceptual, although I wish it gave me a real introspection into the thoughts of a prisoner, it only allowed me to surmise. I attempted a meditation of my own in the blackroom at the icehouse, where I held myself over the backlit rubbing with my arms on structures, this was very physically demanding, and the airplane recording played, which sounded like a gong when the mallet is moved over it in circular motions, getting louder and louder and then silent, repetitive.

 

Prompt 4 - A sequence of degrees of transparencies

Inspired by a man who walks around the area in a packing blanket that reaches to the ground, resembling Rodin's sculpture of Balzac. I have always had an interest in these particle packing blankets that they give away at the homeless shelter down the street. I grew up in a neighborhood where the city of Phoenix localized its homeless, mentally ill and drug addicts, and I live there still today. The people who I have met there and grew up interacting with are a testament to the failure of the system. They are treated as ghosts and secluded to the 5 square blocks around my dad's warehouse. I was thinking of the man who walks around and the levels in which he exists. He is seen almost abstractly as he walks around the downtown, his human form covered and obscured by the cape, people are used to the concept of homelessness existing and seeing it but not interacting with it. The three lightbox's in the blanket represent a light, an eternal form, that exists when the man is seen beyond judgment, the concept of internal light.

Prompt 5 - Cthonic

The Maricopa County Sheriff's office just finished construction across the street from the icehouse. The sight was the first cemetery in Phoenix. When they were digging for the foundation they unearthed the remains of 12 bodies, these were moved down the street to the pioneer cemetery down the street placed in a common grave, each remain in a cardboard box with a clay disk on top listing the contents.  I visited pioneer cemetery, saw the plot they were in, and also saw some graves of poorer residents made of disintegrating concrete, some with plants growing within them. 16-18 years ago we buried our hairless dog rhino in the back of the icehouse by the railroad tracks, we had a ceremony for him, fabrics and treasures were laid atop his body and I played the electric keyboard. I performed another ceremony for Rhino. I constructed him a headstone, a trunk of  thorn tree rendered in unfired clay, marked out where his body would have been with my dad. I pulled an organ out there that had been owned previously by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, originator of the hospice movement that I just happened to have. For the ceremony I lit candles around Rhino's grave, poured water over where his body is buried and played him some organ. Then I grabbed the water, and watered the buried railroad track, to signify as I had read in the Pioneer Cemetery Associations newsletter that "life in Phoenix begins and ends by the railroad tracks." Before the cemetery I got permission from the County Supervisor's Office to film the event from the top of the 5 story County Employee Parking Garage across the street. I set up the shot and had my friend Lucas record the performance from the location of the security cameras. The idea was to point out that we exist among the dead.

The video can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwVYrriI2q1qcWh1eTc4ZDhSRVE

Prompt 6 - Design a monument to Student Debt

I have no image for this prompt. I made drawings of a beehive burner, I recently went on a trip to New Mexico and these burners at old sawmills were all over. They stopped using them because they created too much pollution and they use the sawdust for other things now. For the prompt I proposed that one of these be installed in NYC and continually burned, the burner being operated and the energy expelled without industry, like a person working a lifetime to pay off student debt.