Stack II: Corruption
Stack II: Corruption, cast iron, artist made cotton and recycled 2016 United States Congressional Record paper, gold leaf, mister, steel, bricks, ~4'x7'x4', 2018-
Misting occurs every hour on the hour for 2 minutes
Misting occurs every hour on the hour for 2 minutes
Stack II: Corruption (2018-) consists of an unsealed cast iron plate covered with cockroaches overtaking an abstracted white house form. The plate weighs heavily on top of a 40 inch stack of handmade paper. A soft mist of water descends from above, rusting the iron. The rust slowly drips off the plate and down the stack of handmade paper, creating and destroying in one self-contained, performative sculpture. The fiber used to make the paper consists of recycled United States Congressional Records from 2016 blended with white cotton in a visible gradient, creating a gray to white paper strata. White cotton, a product that drove the continuation of slavery in America and was subsequently the base from which our wealth as a nation grew, was literally blended in the papermaking vat with US Congressional Records from 2016, a pivotal year in our country’s politics and an era we will continue to dissect and question to no satisfying end. On the iron paperweight, a gold-leafed bugking of the mountain sits atop a cluster of cockroaches, an allusion to current American leadership. A cockroach is an intriguing symbol of survival; folklore assures us that roaches will be some of the few living creatures to outlive a nuclear holocaust. Stack II: Corruption is a destructive paperweight, critical of negative contemporary political forces while simultaneously a physical manifestation of rust, corrosion, and the natural reaction of iron, water, and paper. I anticipate the paper eroding in a beautiful, unpredictable entropy each time it is exhibited.