Senior Exhibition 2015 Gallery
Preview
Creation Date
2015
Description
Materials: Aluminum, Laminate Flooring, Wood
Dimensions: 56 x 48 x 48 inches
Project Advisor: Rob Neilson
Year of Graduation: 2015
Medium
Sculpture
Rights
Copyright for this work is held by the artist.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Keywords
aluminum, scuplture, tree, environmental awareness
Artist Statement
As an artist, I am accustomed to using and exploiting many sources of materials. This is not just the inclination of the artist, but also a symptom of humanity – always consuming, never satisfied. Concerned with function, process, and thrift, I have Reclaimed hundreds of cans and many pounds of aluminum scrap to remind myself of where it came from - an open-pit mine in the southern United States, or perhaps shipped across the world from pits in Australia, China, or Brazil. Acres of old growth forest have been razed to satisfy the hunger for aluminum products and thirst for a cold can of refreshing beverage. I am simply offering a reminder of all we have lost for that 12 24 or 36 pack. Tall, old trees, wilderness and adventure – all brought down so we can suck down a cold one in our laminate-flooring living rooms, living vicariously through our television, or in our white-picket fenced yards around bonfires fed by prepackaged firewood. Consider the Produce we will never harvest as anything other than lumps of refined aluminum from land with a world of potential. I have built a small “backyard foundry”, fed it with hardwood lump charcoal, and through this Process reclaimed all the “waste aluminum” into art, so it can been seen with the whisper of the awe one may never know in the presence of the vast, ancient forests of yester-centuries.
Special Thanks to the following people for their donations of time, expertise, support, and of course, aluminum refuse: Rob Neilson, Sarah Gross, Tony Conrad, and the Lawrence University Art Departments and Faculty Tim Law and the Neenah Foundry Company Jonathan D. Steffen Ryan Boehm Anonymous and Helpful Campus and Community Donors