A 25 foot cloudscape drawing is viewable from both sides. It hangs in center gallery with 3000 mortuary toe tags featuring pictures of the deceased from the 2012 Star telegram obituary section. Over 6000 toe tags were created for this work.
Slipping the Flesh and Bone of This Mortal Coil
and
A Chosen Few
Collecting obituaries for a possible project and wanting to do a very large cloudscape drawing began as separate endeavors that merged at some point. As I collected the obituary pages from one city newspaper for one year, I realized that we are born into this world as a blank slate but we acquire all the impressions that family and work and life put on us. We gain quite a bit through the years of maturing. Then as we age, we are downsized in a way. Sometimes we're moved into assisted living and no longer have all the possessions we collected all of our lives. Then we pass away and we're reduced to an obituary in the newspaper. My process was reductive, metaphoric for what happens to our lives. Things are removed until all that is left is a memory.
The physical process to acquire the obituaries began with removing the metro section from the paper, then I removed the obituary pages from that section. Next I cut the obits into columns, removing text and names of all the deceased until all that is left was a photograph. Then I attached the photo to a blank mortuary tag. No name, no cause of death, no list of loved ones or survivors. Just a photo.
Artist's thoughts: As the viewer walks past the works, “A Chosen Few” and “Slipping the Flesh and Bone From This Mortal Coil”, they will see thousands of individual photos without giving them much thought. But these people in the photos shouldn't be dismissed by a simple glance. Each and every one of them had a life filled with events and emotions. Just like you and I.
• 6 feet: width
• 25 feet: width of the largest drawing
• 25 feet: width of the largest installation
• 3,000: number of toe tags in the centerpiece work
• 1 month: length of time spent drawing the 20-foot-wide cloudscape
- Collections: Sculpture-Aesthetic landfill