Concrete Noun

April, 2020 / Artist-in-Residence
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE

Linen, oil, wax crayon, photographs, asphalt, clay, concrete

In this series, photographs of cracked roads and crumbling asphalt are shown alongside rubbings, clay impressions, and actual chunks of the road. The work explores the desire to understand through various mediums—photographs, tangible objects, rubbings on canvas, and monotypes in clay. The title for this body of work, “Concrete Noun,” refers not only to the material of concrete, here used for impression and image, but it also suggests that the way we know a physical thing is through the senses. It also suggests a journey from uncertainty to something more grounded and stable. Some of the rubbings from parking lots and roadways have been cut apart and woven back together, intensifying the fragmentation of these broken surfaces while simultaneously offering a gesture of repair.