Master of Fine Arts Thesis

Chronemics:

Land — Time

Sam Horowitz

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts, School of Art and Design Division of Sculpture/Dimensional Studies New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University Alfred, New York

2020

______Sam Horowitz, MFA

______Coral Lambert, Thesis Advisor

______Alexandra Horochowski, Thesis Advisor

Abstract:

Our ability to provoke change is perhaps best illustrated by our eagerness to alter material states. Within my work, I synthesize and translate deep time into a more relatable, present frame of reference. I subvert common industrial techniques to alter naturally formed and manufactured media, through processes such as foundry, ceramics, and digital fragmentation. I capitalize on the inherent properties of materials in states of flux —cooling molten iron, the freezing and melting of ice, and location tags in

Instagram— to collaborate within the artwork, physically and digitally recording gesture, circumstance, and input. Through material translation and community action, I present possible futures, connect current trends, and fabricate past histories from our current perspective. These reflections are intended to provoke change within an audience, and assist in communal becoming “with.”

Acknowledgements Where to begin. My time at Alfred has been a whirlwind, and I feel the few times I’ve been able to raise my gaze from my work bench have been few and far-between. As I write this, New York enters the second month of quarantine from Covid-19, and the surfaces in my studio gather dust. There w ere a number of projects I’d planned to fabricate and include in this document—and in a thesis show. The shows have all been postponed but writing continues. I put a few sketches in the following pages in lieu of photographs of finished work, but didn’t want to dwell too long on could-haves. The vast majority of the work I write about was ​ ​ completed in my first three semesters, and this extra time to concentrate on writing has helped me solidify some ideas in ways that may not have been possible otherwise. There have been many people who have made these two years possible, productive, and comfortable. I would like to thank my parents for their eternal support and humor, and for the space they give me, both in their hearts and in their basement. Thank you to my advisors, Coral Lambert and Alexa Horochowski, for pushing me and helping me navigate the transition that closed our facilities and put a freeze on studio work. Thank you to the SDS department, and to the entire Art School: I spent increasing hours (and gas) firing kilns and rendering 3-D objects, crossing divisional boundaries to zero in on a number of projects. Thank you in particular to Eric Souther, for your continued help with In Our Image, and to Shawn Murrey, for the time and so many ​ ​ connections- including all the stone cores from Letchworth. Thank you to Otto Muller and Michele Hluchy of the Geology department, for the tools, time, and conversations shared. I hope you recognize aspects I’ve woven in from what I learned in class. Thanks to Bill Carty and John Gill, and to our Problem Solving Cohort for the fascinating angles of approach and expertise. Our class was the strangest and widest-spanning course I’ve ever taken, and probably ever will. Thank you to Glenn Zweygardt, for emergency sand ramming sessions, technical advice, pastries, and fresh eggs. Thank you to my cohort, faculty, techs, and other friends. It’s easy to get tunnel vision in such a small town, and y’all helped me feel human. Thank you Cassandra, for helping me to find such a fulfilling balance between work and play, and to understand how to be my best self. I can’t wait to can our tomatoes and share in whatever is next.

This work is in the memory of my Grandmother, who made spending these two years in such selfish pursuit financially possible. I miss you, and wish we could have shared this moment, and so many more.

Thank you, dear reader. If you have questions about any of this, please don’t hesitate to contact me: [email protected]

i CONTENTS

PROJECTING FUTURES 32 Kinship & Communication

CONSUMING TIME 21 Iterating Nows

PROCESSING 9 Artifice & Aleatory

CONSUMING LAND 1 Fabricating Histories

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ​

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 50

BIBLIOGRAPHY 51

Consuming Land Fabricating Histories

The Nonsite (an indoor earthwork) is a three dimensional logical picture ​ that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site … It is by this three ​ ​ ​ ​ dimensional metaphor that one site can represent another site which does not resemble it—thus The Nonsite. ​ ​

Smithson, Robert. A Provisional Theory of Nonsites ​

Bryce Canyon from “Inspiration Point.” Photo taken during 2008 trip.

The way in which we explain environmental events and frame ourselves within

Earth’s rotation reveals the speeds at which humans inherently function. This velocity discloses the difficulties we find when comprehending deep, or geological time frames1.

Coffee breaks and weekly planners feel insignificant — even anthropocentric — beside glacial melt, reactor meltdown, and the spread of novel viruses. Humans often initiate change without accounting for every resulting factor or fallout; these unseen reactions ripple outward, expanding our touch exponentially. Collectively, we lack a certain

1 In my creative research, deep/geologic time refers to the timescale of processes such as tectonic ​ ​ ​ movement, glacial advance and retreat, the formation of stalactites, growth of crystals, and erosion of stone by wind and water. Oftentime, deep time is measured in MYA, standing for millions of years ago. ​

1 empathy for that which functions out of phase with human, or biological time.2,3 Within ​ ​ ​ ​ the Digital Age, this disassociation grows. My work synthesizes material and space to question these gaps, initiate conversation between self and other, and help solicit agency in our collective role as citizen-stewards.

The illusion of Nature exists as a familiar commonspace; although we are unable to truly touch upon geologic process and timeframes, “natural” spaces gift society a tangible illusion of the Wild. So many of us are just visitors to this natural splendor of ​ ​ the Great Outdoors, and enjoy documenting brief moments when we may escape a city, cubicle, or daily routine4 . In 2008, I took a roadtrip across the country that would forever mark my practice. We stayed in national parks, slept in a tent, and spent whatever time we weren’t driving, hiking. It was my first time west of Colorado, and my first cross-country drive; watching the geological landscape shift through a car window at sixty-five miles an hour was mesmerizing. The sandstones of Utah and big trees of

California awakened within me a new sense of spatial relations, which I incorporated into my studio practice. I began making installation work, striving to recreate the differences I felt between the dwarfing buttes of Zion, gravity-defying formations at

Arches National Park, and the intimate hoodoos5 of Bryce Canyon. That summer moving through the West instilled feelings and concepts that resonate within me still.

2 Lucy Lippard, in The Lure of the Local, calls western culture “lethally shortsighted”, p. 10 ​ ​ ​ 3Our belated response to Covid-19 echoes this collective disconnect. While the speed of this pathogen is biological rather than geological, it still travels more slowly than the spread of news and disinformation. 4 “…a landscape is not a natural feature of the environment but a ‘synthetic’ space, a [human-made] system of spaces superimposed on the face of the land…” Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. The Word Itself, 8 ​ ​ 5 Hoodoos are eroded sandstone pillars, depicted in the photo above.

2 Balanced Rock (left) at Arches National Park, Utah. Photo taken during 2008 trip. ​

While many glacially deposited boulders exist around the world,6 Balanced Rock ​ at Arches National Park is a geologic feature born from erosion, not addition. This

“central landmark7 ” is a pillar of multi-layered sandstones, made up of an erosion-resistant strata sheltering softer members below. Over the course of the 140 million years since the deposits were formed, wind, water, and the expansion of ice have carved away much of the material originally present.8 The feature looks as if a giant had balanced a boulder precariously atop a spire, forming a gigantic cairn.

6 And many have been indexed! An artwork by Jane Hutton, “Map of Named Erratics,” does just that, and can be read about in Making the Geologic Now, 99 ​ ​ 7 Graham J, Arches National Park Geologic Resource Evaluation Report, 13 ​ 8 Ibid ​

3 Surrounding this landmark, visitors have erected their own stacks of stones, mimicking or perhaps honoring this geologic monolith. Cairns, however, are more than just aesthetic gestures or meditative foci. Since before we wrote down out histories, humans have stacked stones to mark paths, dangers, burials, food caches, territories, or otherwise communicate common presence and location.9 While geological forces may leave rocks piled atop one another, they are never as intentionally arranged as the structures built by communities of humans.10 Cairns broadcast a message: “We are here!” Such temporal marks form this most basic human instinct of leaving records of presence, and allow both individuals and communities to outlast their biological timeframes.

Canacadea Creek Rundown (Cairn I) is part of an ongoing project using this ​ language of human-stacked stones to mark space. To create this work, I collected buckets of rocks from the Canacadea Creek. Using these stones, I built dozens of cairns in ceramic kilns, and thermally fused each pile together.11 Through this iterative process,

I ran into occasional happy accidents (some mudrocks melt even at medium-fire12) as the multiples adhered together into single, metamorphosed forms. I crushed mudstone shales I extracted from Penn-Dixie Fossil Park13 into a powder, and used this greenish-glaze as a glue to fuse the more resilient stones to the piles.

9 Williams, David B. Cairs: Messengers in Stone. Seattle, Washington, The Mountaineers Books, 2012 ​ ​ 10 According to the phrase “two rocks does not make a duck” (where ‘duck’ refers to a directional cairn with a ‘beak’ which points in the direction of the trail), fewer than three-rocks stacked atop one another should be read as a natural occurrence, rather than an navigational aid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn ​ 11 I fired to cone ten, between 2,280 and 2,380℉, depending on the rate of heating. 12 Cone six, between 2,120 and 2,205℉, depending on the rate of heating. 13 Penn Dixie Fossil Park is a non-profit park and reserve, situated atop the site of a former cement quarry in Hamburg, NY. For more information, visit https://penndixie.org/ ​

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Canacadea Creek Rundown (Cairn I), 2020. Digital manipulation. Cairn is depicted (in setting) to scale, ​ 18” tall. Wooden shelf mounted atop the photo holds fused cairns, concrete fossils, and glaze tests.

5 By using only these stones and the high-heat of a ceramic kiln, the materials making up the work remain physically close to their natural forms; brought to temperatures similar to those found twenty-nine miles below the surface of the Earth,14 but without that extreme pressure. In fusing each cairn, I apply geologic-esque forces to geologic materials, changing the state of the rocks from sedimentary mudrock to something new, half-metamorphosed into chemical compositions stronger and stranger than before. I returned the cairn to the creek and photographed it, at a location near where I found the stones originally. This is a landscape heavily modified—perhaps entirely created—by direct human action; Canacadea Creek Rundown (Cairn I) depicts ​ ​ the site of Alfred University's construction and landscaping dump ground.

I explored this location midway through my time at Alfred, and was struck by the similarities between the flowing concrete channels spreading downhill and Robert

Smithson’s Asphalt Rundown of 1969. For his work, Smithson orchestrated an entire ​ ​ truck-load of hot asphalt to be poured down a steep embankment. At Alfred, however, the dumps are of concrete, of excess offloaded and washed-out of trucks before the substance cured within their holds. Rather than an artistic event, these actions could perhaps be viewed as flagrant, criminal pollution, for the concrete slugs terminate in a small tributary of the Canacadea Creek. Where Smithson’s work strove to capture the

“crystalline structure of time,”15 Alfred’s “rundowns” record both temporal, entropic curing (opposed to cooling of asphalt), as well as a history of repeated disposal; at least ​ ​ ​ three different compositions of concrete can be observed at the site, each overlapping the last.

14 On average, temperatures rise ~80℉/mile below Earth’s surface, away from the tectonic boundaries. 15Information about the project can be found in Smithson’s writings or at https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/asphalt-rundown

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Photo 1: At least three distinct dumps of concrete, looking West. Northernmost dump is oldest, and pioneered by groundcover.

Photo 2: The terminus of the concrete spills, looking North-West to the fields of Alfred State College. The dark green stripe just to the right of the pipe marks the edge of a concrete channel the stream cut as the material cured.

7 Various states of degradation hint at the chronology of these actions, and join each material in the landscape together under the same physical laws of erosion and capture. When the concrete flowed down the hill, it captured impeccable details of the fall leaf litter it blanketed. I excavated some of these “fossils,” and along with some rock-glaze tests and fused cairns, they inhabit the shelf that projects from the photo. ​ While the vitrified cairn in the landscape is more resilient than its surrounding unfired cousins, it is improbable that any will change naturally before the landscape around them is again modified: further dumps of cement, chunks of asphalt, or construction and forestry debris will soon (geologically speaking) pile over this monument, and continue to alter the location the cairn marks. This sacrificial work exists by association with its gallery portrait and tests, each aspect marking the presence of the other, exhibiting the passage of time and elemental force upon common objects across space.

Smithson’s use of the term entropy is similar to how I think about aleatoricism, ​ ​ although where entropy yields a concluding result (homogeny),16 aleatoric work simply describes a process. Aleatory, as a term, is most often ascribed to chance-music, and to those actions ruled by inderternimable effects. In my understanding and practice, I see aleatory not just as a dice roll, but as the result of incalculable (perhaps unknowable) forces and assemblages at work. These actants emerge through isolating processes and determining variables, which is often the way I begin in the studio; asking questions, and allowing materials to supply their own answers within given parameters.

16 In a 1973 interview with Alison Sky, Smithson relates entropy both to geologic time and to the story of ​ Humpty Dumpty, relating the “wearing down” of erosion or “shattering” of an egg-person to be similar descriptions of materials changing in an “irreversible process [that] will be in a sense metamorphosized...” The Collected Writings, 301-303 ​

8 Processing Artifice and Aleatory

Why Wood, 2018, Bronze. 5” diameter cylindrical form, 25 lbs. ​

When I first arrived at Alfred University, I was immediately drawn to the foundry.

The humming machinery, fast pace, and sense of metamorphosis achieved through the casting process was tangible at the National Casting Center, and I began exploring ancient methods in non-traditional ways. I created Why Wood in the fall of 2018, a ​ ​ twenty-five pound foliated bronze cylindrical form measuring five inches in diameter

9 and ten inches in length. To create the work, I alternated layers of ceramic shell17 and wax, producing a series of laminations. The character of each layer informed the shape of the next, and the result resembled the rings of a tree. The process was aleatoric; each dip of material directed the appearance and character of the next layer. Once the work was cast, I sliced it into three cross-sections, as if carving the work like a gemstone, and brought the cut faces to a high shine. Sawed and polished, the work exists in a state between natural and fabricated, the gloss of the cut contrasting with the dusky patina of the exterior and the saw marks from the trisection.

Top left: Cutting the top off the pattern exposes alternating layers of shell (yellow) and wax (brown). The top is cut in this way in order to allow the wax to melt out of the mold. The hook I used to suspend the work as I dipped it is still anchored and visible within the work.

Top Right: After processing in the burnout kiln, the wax melted out of the form, and the high-heat vitrified the ceramic shell. I used a bronze wire (visible in photo) to help keep the layers registered.

Bottom: After being cast, sandblasted, and a preliminary round of polishing. I later cut the longer length in half to expose more of the layers within, then patinated the work.

17 Ceramic Shell is a molding material consisting of liquid ceramic refractory and silica sand, layered atop a pattern (object to be cast) through a process of dipping.

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Certain processes of creation are more discernible than others. With some experience in metal casting, Why Wood is visually straightforward and the references ​ ​ common; seasonal growth-rings in trees are some of the first natural phenomena many of us are exposed to as children. However, without experience in foundry, the dipping process involved in creating this work is alien. This could make the work feel alchemical rather than procedural, a product of organic growth rather than repeated action. The amount of background an audience needs to understand the entire process is prohibitive to the conversation I was beginning to explore by directly manipulating molten metal.

Tree rings make physical sense without the observer needing a degree in forestry. In the same way, action paintings evoke a history of mark-making and movement to the gallery-goer. Aluminum Drawing #2 similarly captures timeframes, ​ ​ occupying a thermal and temporal metallic space between molten and solidified. To create this work, I cast aluminum into a twenty inch square mold, and dug into the molten metal with a wood tool. The window of time when one can create lasting marks in this manner varies with the temperature of the metal: directly after casting, the metal is too hot to remember the passage of a marking implement—the metal flows back into the gesture like water. If one waits too long, the metal is solidified past the point of easy manipulation. This work exhibits ninety-seconds of time, frozen as the aluminum cooled, a recording of the liquid-response of material as it changed state from molten to solid.

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Marking Aluminum Drawing #2 at the National Casting Center, 2019. Gestural drawing with fabricated ​ ​ tools in molten aluminum. Tooled for 90 seconds. 20#, 20” x 20” x 5”

12 Circles are universal forms, prevailing throughout nature, mathematics, and written human languages. The above work frames a circular gesture, made counter-clockwise, which swirls through the metal and builds up a pile of aerated aluminum where the mark returns to its beginning. Of all the metals I’ve worked with, aluminum stays molten longest, allowing marks to be modified, widened, and even erased. The temperature of aluminum when molten is a bit over 1,200 degrees

Fahrenheit, which makes it the lowest-melting metal I’ve worked with. These factors together make it best physically suited for drawing, but as with Why Wood, they also do ​ ​ the most to veil the physical making-process. Iron, on the other hand, melts at a temperature over 1,000 hotter than aluminum, and solidifies much more quickly; at this scale, one only has between fifteen and forty seconds when a casting is workable.

Drawings in iron thus possess uneditable-immediacy, which I embrace in Tangents, an ​ ​ ongoing body of work.

This series, which I began in 2018, consists of a multitude of cast iron trapezoids, poured open face and scarred while molten. In geometry, a tangent is a collection of points that begin at a specific moment and continue linearly to infinity. In my work, each trapezoid traces and records a unique moment, a gathering where a group of participants perform together to melt and cast iron.18 This growing collection of castings recalls the community needed to successfully conduct an iron pour. As I continue to cast

Tangents into the future, they join an ever-widening circle, the repetitive marks within ​ scoring a rough, continuous line. Each marked trapezoid lengthens and turns the trajectory, all while joining and enriching an ever-expanding circle.

18 Iron is the most abundant element on Earth by mass, and, according to C.W Ammen, “the most important metal known” to humans. Ammen, C.W., Casting Iron, v ​ ​

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st th Image 1: Marking the 1 ​ Tangent, 2018, (Left), and the 9 ,​ 2019, in Buffalo, NY. Photos by Sarah Kraus. ​ ​ ​ ​

Image 2: Tangents, 2018-Present. Marked cast iron. Dimensions grow. 2020 Photo by Alexa Horochowski. ​ ​

14 In these guestural works, metal itself becomes a collaborator in ways increasingly straightforward from where I began with Why Wood. Exhibiting tools, or ​ ​ displaying documentation and time-signatures of the marking event brings the audience closer to the conception and physical interactions making up these works. However, these clues are still far from the smoky, sweaty, tremendous heat marking these works entails. Rather than simply exhibit the foundry as art-happening, I’m interested in the conversation between state changes and objects: materials, temperatures, and people.

These conversations between the state changes of audience and object, and emergence, led me to Artifice. This work consists of two metal castings, each supported ​ ​ by a wooden pedestal, and joined by a bench. One casting is a bronze-iron alloy, sheathed in cement. Its concave maw exhibits knots and swirls of cast, marbled metal.

The second half of the work, cast in steel-iron, is filled with thirty-pounds of crystallized borax, and various inclusions. I was fascinated by the way modeling wax behaved as it cooled, and I spent hours finding the perfect temperature where I could scrape uniform shuddering-fungal frills off the surface of a wax-pool. As these ripples cooled, I was able to further twist, join, and build with them. By defining this process as a self-prescribed set of rules (using only wax scrapes to form the “crystals”), I allowed inherent waxy features into the work, and gave center-stage to the aleatory properties of the wax state-change itself. Slowing down, and recognizing my materials as collaborators, I built on without second-guessing, eventually arriving with two halves of a giant fabricated geode19 . Both sides rest on steel-capped wooden pedestals, which in turn are connected

19 The wax form was originally a single half-geode. However, the work was too large to cast in one shot with our induction furnace. I ended up taking a sand mold of the wax form, and after melting it out, I split the top and bottom into two different molds, lining each with plasticine. 900# of sand later, I cast the two

15 by a wooden plank bench. The two pedestals angle and focus the castings atop towards the center, implicating seated observers within this material conversation.

Each half of the geode exhibits unique state changes. The forms within Bronze ​ Age represent the working period of modeling wax, cast in bronze-iron. These sinuous ​ swirls and twists grapple a number of bronze crystalline forms worked into the wax, and left within the sand mold. When pouring, the molten metal surrounded and trapped the crystals within edies, forming settings and locking the metals together. After casting,

I reworked a number of the surfaces of the work, finding and creating wide stretches of high shine and patina. Polished high spots and edges draw the eye about the piece, emphasizing the dynamics of wax, transformed.

Artifice, 2019, with Rooke. Bronze, bronze-iron, iron-steel, borax, plastics, inclusions, steel, wood. ​

halves over two heats from the induction furnace, first melting down a number of scrap bronze-iron left over from a previous student. We cast the face of the crystal first, but my estimation was off, and the full crucible didn’t fill the mold. Within this first half, the more-dense bronze settled to the bottom, displacing the iron, and forming a discernible strata. Because we cast the work face-down, the ‘bronziest’ parts are those most protruding from the face of the crystal. To cast the second half, we again fired the induction furnace, but mistakenly added some steel to the melt, which dramatically added to the time it took to melt the metal. The physical and aesthetic features of the bronze-iron alloy are everything I wanted: The blend is an interesting, marbled metal that is easy to drill, tap, grind, and polish. However, the steel-iron is a nightmare: it resists grinding, breaks drill bits, and generally misbehaves.

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Image 1: Artifice, 2019. Graphite-washed wax detail with bronze inclusions. ​ ​ Image 2: Artifice, 2019. Bronze, bronze-iron, iron-steel, concrete, borax, plastics, studio till, steel, wood. ​ ​ ​

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Artifice (Bronze Age), 2019. Bronze, bronze-iron, steel, wood, cement. ​ Including cement, this half weighs 300 lbs.

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Artifice (Crystal Age), 2019. Iron-steel, 40 lbs crystallized borax, studio till (plastics, ​ ​ ​ paper, wool, food coloring). This half weighs 150 lbs.

19 Crystal Age exhibits natural crystallization that formed as borax fell out of ​ ​ suspension in cooling water. I grew these crystals by placing the casting on its back, like a miniature bathtub. I submitted the cavernous form to dozens of crystalline-baths, filling the casting with a boiling supersaturated mixture of water and borax20. Various studio-debris found their way into this bath, and have been captured deep within various strata of crystallization: plastic shopping bags, the shards of a dropped ceramic mug, Alfred Shale, wool, junk mail, and a splash of food-coloring. Similar to glacial till, or the unsorted debris eroded and moved by a glacier, these bits represent the geology of my studio.

Each material that makes up this work is presented in various states of synthesis: they have been extracted, cleaned, reduced, colored, or treated. Smelting and then re-melting the metal; creating the plastics and then receiving the bags from a retailer; cutting, milling, and buying the wood — all represent periods of human time. Geologic crystallization follows similar pathways to the methods I used to grow the Crystal Age, ​ ​ but the time-frames are drastically dissimilar. The two concave forms of Artifice create ​ ​ an aural experience; a partial enclosure defining an intimate space. The bench between the two castings facilitates communing with deep time. By entering the language of furniture, this work invites conversation: both human-to-human, and human-to-artwork. This piece assists in the physical translation of deep-time action to a rate perceivable to the human body.

20 “Supersaturated,” in this instance, refers to a solution that is unable to dissolve any more of a specific ​ material. In the case of borax, one can heat water to boiling, at which point the water is able to suspend a higher concentration of borax. As more (room temperature) borax is added to the mix, the water temperature drops; thus the solution must be added-to slowly. I used a piece of plywood to cover the crystal, and draped 4” insulation and blankets over the entire setup to slow the cooling process. Slowing the rate at which the borax fell out of suspension produced the largest and (what I judged to be) best crystals. Further, sponging out the crystal when the solution was still blood-warm inhibited the growth of tiny micro-crystals, which simply fogged up the larger, more impressive growths.

20 Consuming Time Iterating Nows

“The Anthropocene marks severe discontinuities; what comes after will not be like what came before. I think our job is to make the Anthropocene as short/thin as possible and to cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that can replenish refuge … Maybe, but only maybe, and only with intense commitment and collaborative works and plays with other terrans, flourishing for rich multispecies assemblages that include people will be possible … I am ​ ​ calling all this the Chthulucene — past, present, and to come.”

Haraway, Donna. Staying With the Trouble, 100-101. My emphasis ​ ​

Comprehending material states is straightforward when those materials change before our eyes: icicles dripping off roof-eaves, concrete setting around a post, or as seen in the last chapter, metal melting in a crucible and solidifying within a mold.

However, all these changes rely on our perspective. Rarely do we have the occasion to watch ice freeze - or paint to dry, or grass to grow. Although these actions still take place over a human-perceivable duration, that time commitment feels too long to wait.

21 Similarly, our ability to notice the landscape and continental plates shifting around us is also a question of perspective and duration.

The term Anthropocene refers to a epoch debated by leading scientists and ​ ​ philosophers alike,22 but has been accepted colloquially to describe our current geologic trajectory. Donna Haraway argues against the naming of this epoch in her book Staying ​ With The Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Haraway contends that creating an ​

21 In Here/There: Telepresence, Touch, and Art at the Interface, Kris Paulson writes of “...the almost ​ ​ ​ impossibly inhuman pace of watching the grass grow … endlessly wait[ing], inhabiting the temporal scale of the plant” in relation to The Telegarden, an early internet artwork by Ken Goldberg, 130. ​ ​ 22This argument is not so much over the fact that humans have set in motion global lasting change, but as to when this period of change should be said to begin. Should it be the 1945 deployment of atomic bombs, a phenomenon that spread a layer of radioactive material across the globe? Or, the beginning of the industrial revolution, when cities of factories began producing population-choking clouds of smog? Or, even earlier, with the dawn of agriculture and terraforming in the Fertile Crescent? This is a discussion still in progress at the writing of this paper.

21 epoch assuming humanity as the main driver of change is the very epitome of anthropocentrism, cementing in place the wide-held view of human-first politics.

Haraway stresses the value of seeing beyond the human-gaze, outside of current capitalist consumer roles, of viewing ourselves as within a greater mass of multi-species entwinements, assemblages, and goings-on; or as she terms it, the Chthulucene. ​ Haraway’s concept echoes writing on the Ecoscene23 by Wendelin Küpers, a moment ​ after anthropocenic notions have faded, a time when humans and non-humans have found a living balance and harmony.

Similarly important to understanding the intricacies of those relationships outside of our own species, is to better grasp the goings-on within. Stewart Brand, who began The Long Now, and is partly responsible for the 10,000 year clock24 , argues that ​ ​ from within this world of human and non-human interactions, we exist at multiple time-frames simultaneously. He groups this system as six rates of change, stacked in order of acceleration. This system begins to help decipher the relationships between individual anthropologic rates of change, and between our species’s collective speed and the rest of the non-human world (illustration on following page). Current research has begun to question the location of “nature” within these layers. If accelerated climate change continues to wreak havoc within governmental systems and cultural norms, perhaps it should be relocated atop those two tiers, as those layers fail to keep pace25 .

23 Kuepers, Wendelin. (2017). From Anthropocene to Ecoscene?! ​ 24 While I first met the concept of Stewart Brand and Elon Musk’s clock-in-a-mountain with disdain, I now believe their sentiments are pure: Brand foresaw the clock as a tool with which humanity could grasp deep-time with as much significance as when we first saw the Earth as the Blue Marble, the first full-disc ​ ​ color image of the planet campaigned for by Brand in the late 60s. This type of reflection and self-awareness could help combat climate change and environmental destruction. 25 Silverman, Howard. Solving for Pattern, accessed 3/04/20. https://www.solvingforpattern.org/2013/06/08/will-climate-shuffle-the-pace-layers/

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Stewart Brand’s Pace Layers, diagram sourced from Sliverman’s article.26 ​ ​

Layering is a consistent theme in my practice, and I find myself highlighting the ways in which these layers interact. Various processes that function together in layers, or assemblages, form all aspects of the world around us. Arresting, isolating, or simply slowing and expanding these processes draw attention to the multitude of actants involved in the creation of an object. One of the quickest reactions and most successful visually-logical results my research has discovered has been the relationship between cast paper and iron. Over-beaten pulp, when allowed to dry while bound about an iron casting, oxidizes those surfaces with the highest contours. This rust then migrates into and through the paper, creating dappled, red-brown prints. Such drawings permeate

Chip, 2019, and Untitled (Rusting Cylinder), 2020. ​ ​ ​

26I would take Silverman one step further: As Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc across the world, we are advised apart from friends, and have learned to embrace video-chat as socializing. The government sends tax-payers bailout money, and struggles to pass adequate legislation to support areas in need. Supply-chains are stretched to and beyond limits, as stay-at-home orders skew usage and demand. Restaurants and museums are shuttered, and the United States is registering unemployment in the millions - a number growing faster than ever recorded, and set to reach new post-World War II levels ( CNN Business, 4/18/2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/economy/unemployment-benefits-coronavirus/index.html). ​ ​ Many citizens are legally-required to cover their faces in public, and social-media feeds are awash with DIY instructions and trendily-patterned masks. Covid-19, a phenomenon born of the Nature layer, has this ​ ​ month risen to the top of Brand’s stack.

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Image 1: Chip, 2019. Cast iron, cast abaca paper, rust. 25 lbs, 12” x 12” x 10” ​ ​ Image 2: Untitled (Rusting Cylinder), 2020. Cast iron, cast flax paper, rust. 12 lbs, 12” x 1.5” Diameter ​ ​

24

Tablets, 2018-present. Chill-cast iron and copper inclusions. Dimensions vary, greatest height is 24” ​

Perhaps less easily conceivable, but more dramatic, is the state change of temperature variance in Tablets. In foundry terms, ingot iron is the chilled dregs leftover ​ ​ ​ ​ in the bottom of a ladle or crucible, poured into simple forms for use later. This cooler metal (still molten, but flowing more like honey than water) falls heavily into molds, forming turbulent swirls and ledges. This metal cools further before the next ladle is emptied on top, forming discernible separations and creases in the final product. These sculptures display a stratigraphic history of their creation, of the minutes and sometimes days between consecutive pours into a mold.

The systems and rules I impose upon materials allow for the intrinsic qualities of each assemblage to emerge organically and aelatorically. Temperature is one of the

25 most active variables within my practice.27 When casting iron, we heat the metal to

2,650 degrees Fahrenheit; although iron melts around 2,200 degrees (depending on the alloy), higher heats compel the metal to flow more freely, and better fill complex molds and patterns. Therefore, the difference in temperature between an iron casting sitting on a table and in the process of pouring is often significantly over 2,200 degrees. This temperature differential between creation, exhibition, and use, is similar for high-fire ceramics and glass objects. However, within my work, none of these materials overtly advertise this difference. The material that best displays its temperature differential in the gallery is ice: it melts.

27 On a molecular level, temperature is motion, and motion is measured in distance/time. Therefore, I would contend that temperature could be seen as a particular measure of time.

26

Work Samples (Detail), 2020. Borax, cement, ceramic, glass, ice, stone, wood, paper, iron, aluminum, ​ bronze. Dimensions vary, ice melts. Second photo taken four hours after the first.

27

Work Samples (Detail), 2020. Borax, cement, ceramic, glass, ice, stone, wood, paper, ​ iron, aluminum, bronze. Tallest core is 40” with a 4.5” diameter

28 State/phase change is present in all my work, but perhaps most tangible in Work ​ Samples, 2020. At standard elevations and pressures, ice forms at temperatures below ​ ​ ​ 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The cores on this shelf are made of a number of materials: various ceramics, stone, borax, concrete, glass, wood, paper, and ice. Here, ice alone can be observed changing state: melting onto the shelf and running into the gutter. This liquid is then transferred to a mold, where it is frozen back into a cylinder - cycling the liquid back to a solid state. The loss of data (grime) as this core is repetitively frozen and thawed results in a progressively-cleaner material. Even though the temperature differential of ice between solid and liquid is 5,000 percent lower than the ceramic cores standing beside them, the changes we notice are those which function before our eyes.

Imagined Stratum (Slough), 2019. Cast iron. 20 lbs, 12” x 24” x 24” ​ ​ ​

29

Imagined Stratum (Growth), 2019. Cast iron. 20 lbs, 12” x 24” x 24” ​ ​ ​

Manuel Delanda’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History makes constant ​ ​ reference to the dynamic nature of the world: nothing is sedentary, removed, or apart from anything else. What differs is the rate at which all things, materials, ideas, and concepts, move. Talk of the Anthropocene, and of establishing a new geologic epoch, would be a dramatic state change. The rubbish and litter I cast to create Imagined ​ Stratum, 2020, projects the possibility of plastic-heavy sedimentary deposits of the ​ future. This work, consisting of a 12” x 24” textured cast iron plane intersected by a 2” diameter iron cylinder, rebuilds a stratum, as if extending outward radially from a fabricated core-sample.

To create the Slough face of the work, I pressed materials into curing sand: ​ ​ plastic bags and wrap, aluminum cans, styrofoam, plastic-packaged disposable

30 silverware, rigid molded plastic forms, and other bits of litter I found in various trash cans at Alfred University. After the sand cured, I built up a layer of mosses, soil, and stones, all dug from the Canacadea Creek where it runs through campus, forming the organic texture shown on Growth. Each side of the sand mold was formed around an ​ ​ iron core sample, which I had previously chill-cast and now built into this work.

Imagined Stratum is a harbinger for what is to come: an imagined future. Such imagery ​ activates viewers, calling attention to their own contributions to—or inflictions upon—the planet alike. In this way, this work gains the potential to facilitate change and encourage reflection beyond the scope of the art gallery.

Imagined Stratum (Slough), 2019. Detail. Cast iron. 20 lbs, 12” x 24” x 24” ​

31 Projecting Futures Kinship and Communication

“We cannot protect something we do not love. We cannot love something we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see — or hear, or sense.”

Louv, Richard. The Nature Principle, 3:43:39 ​ ​

In August of 2019, I was invited to participate in a social practice engagement project entitled Won’t You Be My Neighbor.28 This work connected Alfred students to ​ community members in pairs over the course of the summer. The project culminated in the creation of an artwork, or similar display of collaboration. I was paired with

Sherman Clarke, an Alfred resident and University librarian. We shared ideas of strata and categorization, of order, identity, and material. Together, we created Time Becomes ​ Us. This work consisted of a 6’ x 1’ x 1’ wooden box lined with sheetrock, elevated on a ​ steel frame. We provided buckets filled with a variety of materials: a white clay recipe by ceramicist Val Cushing,29 rocks from Clarke’s backyard and the surrounding hills, synthetic materials harvested from my studio and from the School of Art and Design

(plastic wrapping, drinking straws, paperwork and junk mail), bisqued-red tile scrap from a Turner Teaching Fellow, and a rinse pail with a hand towel. We developed a booklet housed within the work that detailed methods of interaction and participation, and recorded written reactions to the piece.

28 This exhibition was curated by Michael Stevenson Jr. and Cassandra Bull, with the aid of Chief Curator at the Cohen Gallery, Caitlin Brown. 29 In attempting to connect this work to the Alfred community with as many strings as possible, we followed a recipe for a claybody from “the book,” Cushing’s bound compilation of his research as an Alfred professor. Cushing’s book is available from the Alfred Pharmacy.

32

The first stage of Time Becomes Us, August - September 2019. Community members build layers into the ​ ​ work and add thoughts to the bookend. Sherman Clarke begins the booklet in the upper-left photo.

33

Chronemics, a short written piece I enclosed within the booklet ​ available for participants to Time Becomes Us. ​

34 The community built layer upon layer, filling the form over the course of the exhibition one handful of clay at a time. Such community action instigates communication and play, and provokes thoughts of environment, deep time, and malleability. Each participant built upon the work of the previous: sometimes dismantling; sometimes obscuring; but more often simply butting up against and extending. Made by the many hands of the community, this work is a portrait of that same body: an assemblage consisting of a specific group of humans, intentionally-arranged objects, and temperature. This conscious conglomeration of human and non-human actants is, I hope, a pathway toward fertile communication and future growth. Timothy Morton defines this deliberate “forging of links”30 between human and nonhuman as kindness. Establishing and enacting this sort of kindness is ​ ​ essential in navigating our current moment of extreme societal, economic, and political stratification.

By close of the month-long show, participants had built five feet into the six-foot void, creating a stratascape of the community. We fired the piece to ~2,200℉.31 The work began as a riot of color and textures: saturated plastic-blues, emerald greens, hot pinks, and tangerine-oranges, covered with fingerprints, describing acute angles, stippled with sgraffito, and sedimentary in nature. After firing, all colors muted and browned, edges softened, and lines curved. The extreme temperatures the entire piece was subjected to homogenized tone and form, creating what now resembles a geologic fragment, metamorphosed. The piece aged.

30 Morton, Timothy. Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People, pg. 140 ​ ​ 31 Although I was trying to hit cone 6, I overfired and starved the kiln of oxygen (aka reduced), and cone 7 started to move a bit.

35

Time Becomes Us, 2020. Before (above) and after firing in the burnout kiln. All plastics and organics ​ burned out of the work, while some rocks slumped, some fell away, and others exploded.

A sense of community inspired and imbued every aspect of Time Becomes Us, ​ ​ from conception to firing. Clarke and I drew upon the Alfred neighborhood both for source material and action. This social network intrigued me, and I began thinking about ways in which to involve greater numbers of participants in my work.

In the spring of 2019, Instagram32 was the fifth-most downloaded app in the world, and boasted over a billion active accounts.33 I was and am one of these users, and began to frame my experience through the lens of my recent experiences with Time ​ Becomes Us.

32 Instagram is a photo-sharing app owned by Facebook. 33 Briskman, Jonathan, “Top Apps Worldwide for Q2 2019 by Downloads,” Sensor Tower (Blog), ​ ​ ​ July 23rd, 2019.

36 Instagram users capture likes, and use hashtags (#), mentions, and locations (@) ​ ​ to add metadata to their photos. Savvy users known as ‘influencers’ capitalize on likes, ​ ​ earning money from sponsors and advertisers. Their popularity causes their photos to appear more frequently in the platform's algorithm. An influencer’s photos are often self-portraits, and the landscape framing them (and whatever product or lifestyle they’re representing) becomes a backdrop, or trophy. The Earth becomes a set, poised to sell. These photos, and the role of the land within them, serve as a timely metaphor for our societal relationship to the planet: a “stage for thrills”34 fun to visit. Although subjects within these images pose ownership of the land, collectivally, we don’t care for that same land as our own.35

Selfies taken in this way show uncut vanity. Human subjects are asking to be liked, to be given attention, have their actions coveted, and their presences noted and ​ recorded. The power of such captures is tangible; each image is seen across hundreds, sometimes tens-of-thousands of screens; users diligently double-tapping their approval or adding a comment. I began downloading banks of portraits as a datasource for an ongoing project titled In Our Image. The first location I chose to model in this way was ​ ​ Horseshoe Bend, a small park on the Colorado River in Arizona. Until a social-media boom in 2016, this overlook was one of the state's better-kept secrets. Over the course of two summers, daily visitation swelled 1,900%,36 and the town and local community had to scramble to better avail the location to the masses. Park employees attributed

34 “The millennials … have tended to regard the natural world as a stage for thrills: nature as a theme-park ride.” Louv, Richard. The Nature Principle, 2:41:41 ​ 35 Robin Kimmerer, in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, explores the ways in which we have turned away ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ from traditional, balanced relationships with the Earth. 36 https://www.outsideonline.com/2291861/horseshoe-bend-canary-our-park-system ​

37 “social buzz”37 to the spike in tourism. In reaction to the increase in visitors, the town built new parking lots, expanded roads, and paved trails. Litter multiplied, as did fatalities. My own experience held to this theory: when I began this project and searched Google for “most Instagrammable locations,” Horseshoe Bend was the top hit.

I copied Instagram’s nine “top posts” of the canyon on November 8th, 2019.

Each photo contained one or more people as subjects. These posts were highlighted by

Instagram because they boasted the most, and most recent likes and shares, edging out those photos containing only landscape. I uploaded the photographs to a program called Reality Capture38 and began to model the results.

Source photography copied from Instagram on November 8th, 2019.

37 Mieke Bal defines “social buzz” as “materiality of the social,” and I feel a physical manisification of social response (e.g. going viral) perfectly illustrates this term. Of What One Cannot Speak (Chicago, IL: ​ ​ University of Chicago Press, 2010), 164 38 A photogrammetry program that layers separate photos into digital 3-D files.

38 Because of the variety of angles, perspectives, and obstructions (read: humans) of the source photography, the file was fragmented: faces appeared superimposed upon rock faces; hard edges eroded into digital noise. I 3-D printed the transmogrified model, and corresponding glitches led the machine to build superfluous scaffoldings and planes.

In sketches, I expand the model to 8 linear feet, half extending from one wall while continuing on the other side, effectively intersecting the work within the containing architecture. This intersection denies the work objecthood, or the ability to physically ​ ​ exist within our built architectures; a “three dimensional metaphor.”39

This model validated all the data-collection and research I’d put into the piece, but I wasn’t personally invested in the location. I had become just another digital tourist, rubbernecking at this demonstration of vanity and capitalization. Having never physically visited Horseshoe Bend, all my experiences were synthesized through a computer screen, and through the material of my research. By this sense of digital alienation, I formed a connection to the location that was solely conceptual, abstract. I had never touched those sun-baked sandstones, nor experienced the drop in the pit of my stomach when looking off the precipice. The resulting 3-D model became, in the words of Michel Foucault, a hetrotopia.

There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places — places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society — which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.

Foucault, Michel. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias, p. 3-4 ​ ​

39 Flan, Jack. “Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings,” 364 ​

39

Image 1: In Our Image (Horseshoe Bend), 2019. Digital object. ​ ​

Image 2: In Our Image (Horseshoe Bend), 2019. 3-D printed object. ​ ​

40 Horseshoe Bend, Arizona, is neither utopia nor heterotopia, but In Our Image ​ (Horseshoe Bend) is the latter. Layers of posed iterations (photos) of the location are ​ combined to form the 3-D model, which simultaneously represents all and none of that source imagery. While this digital estrangement is interesting territory, I have an affinity for working with material I can touch.

In January 2020, I obtained two pallets of geological core samples from the 2015 construction of the Genesee Arch Bridge, near Letchworth State Park. I took these physical relics as direction, and ran the photogrammetric process for the outlook on

Letchworth’s Upper Falls, which frames this newly-constructed steel trellis. Once synthesized through the rendering software, the 3-D model contained fragments of humans but no recognizable faces. The prevailing subject instead is the bridge: a multi-million dollar industrial endeavor engineered to allow humans to navigate over a geologic chasm. Rather than exhibit the individual, this model highlights the collective infrastructure we have built into the land, and serves as a metaphor for our priorities; we see ourselves as outside of the Earth; separate, in-focus while the landscape about us blurs.

A sense of geological ambiguity surrounds every iteration of In Our Image. ​ ​ Dis/reassociation and abstraction, glitches as well as a hybridization, are the methods by which this project both draws connections and illustrates distance perceived and enacted between humans and the landscape. In Our Image calls upon a skewed process ​ ​ of democracy;40 I see “top posts” as socially-elected photographic representatives of a location tagged. By layering the images in proportion to the numbers of “likes,” the corresponding framework becomes a political space, drawing context from and reforming itself to the (digital) audience.

40 Of course, Instagram’s algorithm determines what we are shown on their platform, but I see this computerized action as a sort of gerrymandering, a staple of what we here in the States call a democracy.

41

In Our Image (Genesee Arch Bridge), 2020. Digital Objects and proposal sketches, 2020 ​

42 Looking back to Robert Smithson, the model becomes a non-site, a ​ ​ three-dimensional representation, or map of a place, digitally and socially constructed.

Each time a material goes through a transformation — such as a photograph, a scan, or a digital creation— there is a certain amount of digital erosion, fragmentation, and abstraction: human figures and infrastructure reveal themselves differently within data synthesized by a computer. These best-guesses and estimations on the part of the program further the distance between ourselves and the world around us, and add to environmental disconnect; illustrated by the loss and disruption of data from within this photogrammetric process.

Data, and data storage and collection are often at the center of our attempts to understand others, and the world around us. Science relies on data to form trends and build connections, while in a broader sense, “data” could be used to describe any language or code. Such was my thinking when I visited the National Science Foundation

Ice Core Facility outside of Denver, Colorado, in 2019. Walking between shelves containing over 13 miles of sectioned ice cores, the freezer-facility felt hallowed. These cylindrical forms, stored in mylar-coated tubes, gave me a sense of a future past, of the

Matrix41 , and of a morgue. However, when pulling samples and cutting ice with the

Curator, the atmosphere was laid-back, companionable, and easy. Within their enormous walk-in freezer, these cores represent data reaching back 800,000 years.42 I was able to acquire two samples43 : one that was around my own age, and another the

41 Wachowski, Lana & Lilly. The Matrix. Warner Brothers, 1999 ​ ​ 42 Hargreaves, Geoffrey. Interview with the author. National Ice Core Lab, 10/11/19 43 If one is interested, tours of the facility and redundant samples are available at https://icecores.org/use ​

43 age of Alfred University. I bought a deep freezer to maintain these relics, and through evolving plans and sketches, this assemblage is forming into a participatory artwork.

Within a gallery, a four-foot long counter-height block stands against a wall. It is clad in sandblasted wood, a curious, timeless object. The top is glass, clear but in this state opaque with beads of frozen condensation. Light shines upward and outward, illuminating the drops of ice, causing them to glow and refract the soft light amongst thousands of tiny spheres. In order to see within the box, one must break gallery convention and touch the work to wipe and scrape the frost away. Only then will one be able to see the contents of the chest: marked and dated ice cores, accumulating further layers of frost. This is a freezer, though modified to shed any commercial or culinary associations.

Freeze/Thaw, pencil sketch for thesis proposal

44

Left: National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility, Lakewood, CO. 10/2019, photo by the author. Right: Hornell Plaza snow banks, Hornell, NY, 3/3/2020. Toyota Tacoma for scale.

Touching the cold, damp, ice-encrusted glass physically connects a viewer to the piece, and sparks a conversation between temperature and time. Due to the sustained freeze of the polar caps, we are able to access vast milenia of climate data. This information is captured and stored the form of microscopic bubbles of air, frozen in ice kilometers thick. In Hornell Plaza, “inner-city glaciers”,44 or, as others may know them, snowbanks, similarly serve as witness, amassing the shopping center’s litter of cigarette butts, plastic wrapping, asphalt chunks, road salt, and empty food containers. Cores I drew from these banks lie in the freezer alongside two meters of core drawn from the

South Pole. These latter cores are almost twice as wide as the former, and immeasurably cleaner. However, within the freezer, ice is ice; as the machine continues through it’s freeze-thaw cycle, accumulating moisture fuses to all cores alike, and they slowly grow. This entropic homogenizing of material is an illustration of deep time, visible over years rather than centuries. The sensation of cold experienced by a viewer ​ ​ haptically conducts them into this conversation. Once they look past the frosted glass, the anthropic cores visually implicate them as collaborators, and emphasize our collective (albeit sometimes destructive and often unknowing) communal creations.

44 Christian Neal Milneil, “Inner-City Glaciers,” in Making the Geologic Now, ed. Elizabeth Ellsworth and ​ ​ Jamie Kruse (New York, Punctum Books, 2013), 79

45

Image 1: Grandma’s Chair (Detail), 2019. Porcelain, carbonized-chair. Dimensions vary. ​ ​ Image 2: Photograph of a fossil my grandmother collected and kept on her desk when I was a child.

46 Similarly, a lack of change, or stasis, can also demonstrate the multitude of paces and speeds exercised by Terran processes. Fossils, in this manner, manifest geologic time. My grandmother collected such specimens. She would take me hunting for trilobites and brachiopods over the summers on Lake Canadise in western New York.

Later, she expanded her collection to include insect-calligraphed sticks — each object a record of presence; a mark of passage. Fossilization records bodies, footprints, burrows, and other types of phenomenon — decades, centuries, and eons after the subjects die.

The fossil record transcends each of us individually, and ties us together outside human lifespans.

Fossils chronicle individual organisms, isolated actions, and specific durations of time. A fossil functions as a bookend, exhibiting the conclusion of an event or object. I drew upon the isolation and metamorphosis of fossilization to address common memory, loss, and preservation in Grandma’s Chair, 2019. To create this work, I ​ ​ dismantled a chair similar to those I remembered from my Grandparent’s house, and buried those parts in bricks of porcelain clay. I fired the blocks to 2,300℉ and then sawed them open, cutting through the cremated components within. Much of the wood remained within the clay as pure charcoal, having burned without oxygen.

These disassembled pieces of the chair were converted to charcoal, no longer susceptible to decay, nor capable of their previous function. They are removed from the carbon cycle of the forest, and also removed from the home as parts previously making up a common domestic object. By depriving the wood of oxygen during the firing, the physicality of the porcelain chemically alters the state of the wood contained within it.

47 The materials function together as a conscious fossilization process, a cremation, a physical manifestation of memory, preserved. The chair is compressed, metamorphosed. No earthly process exists to reverse this chemical reaction; the rate of change of the materials making up the chair are slowed to a pace geologic.

***

Chronemics connects viewers in new ways to the materials common to our ​ everyday lives: a wooden chair, ceramic objects, metals, and social media. My work highlights collective fragmentation and re-association between humans and the world surrounding them. Such reflection paves the way for more fertile interactions; both human-to-human and non-human alike. Through material translations, I predict possible futures, connect current trends, and fabricate past histories from current perspectives.

I approach this conversation in three ways. Works such as Canacadea Creek ​ Rundown (Cairn I) and Artifice invite viewers to reflect on their place within a species ​ ​ ​ capable of terraforming, of orchestrating vast changes upon the planet. These changes

“determine the livability of the earth”45 and may constitute the recognition and commencement of a new geologic epoch. Images of this so-called Anthropocene surface within these works, crystallizing, eroding, and augmenting landscape and geologic process.

Other projects approach the current situation from a different direction, and demonstrate an array of material responses and expressions. A majority of these pieces

45 Ting, Anna and all: Arts of Living on a Dying Planet, p. G1 ​ ​ ​

48 utilize temperature to exhibit change, such as Work Samples. In such projects, the ​ ​ materials involved interact within situations I orchestrate, and share agency in determining results. This closed set of rules allows the components involved to speak for themselves, and produce independent aleatoric responses.

My participatory work bridges these forms of approach, and invites viewers to become “with” (if I may borrow Harraway and Bennet’s language) the work. Just as the anthropogenic cores of Freeze/Thaw implicate viewers by association, my work pushes ​ ​ participants to recognize the multitude of eddies and actants stemming from each of their movements and decisions.

It is a community coming together that can help shorten, or perhaps subvert, the so-called Anthropocene. With care and intention, perhaps these same communities can help restore our mutual wonder of, and curiosity in, the world surrounding us. Within the greater discussions and movements of geologic epochs, my work functions as a mirror, capturing and reflecting our movements and actions back at us. Perhaps, the resulting image will drive collective empathy, further discussion, and ground perspective.

49 List of Illustrations

Consuming Land

Bryce Canyon 2 Balanced Rock 3 Canacadea Creek Rundown (Cairn I), 2020 5, 7 ​

Processing

Why Wood, 2018, and making of 9, 10 ​ Aluminum Drawing #2, 2019, and making of 12 ​ Tangents, 2018 -, and making of 14 ​ Artifice, 2019, and details 16-19 ​

Consuming Time

Pace Layers 23 Chip, 2019 24 ​ Untitled (Rusting Cylinder), 2020 24 ​ Tablets, 2018- 25 ​ Temperature Differential Graph, 2020 26 Work Samples, 2020 27,28 ​ Imagined Stratum, 2020 29, 30, 31 ​

Projecting Futures

Time Becomes Us, 2019, and details 33, 36 ​ Chronemics, 2019 34 ​ Horseshoe Bend source photography 38 In Our Image, proposal & research, 2020 40, 42 ​ Freeze/Thaw, 2020 (Pencil sketch) 44 ​ National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility, CO 45 Hornel-Plaza snowbank (Inner-City Glacier), 3/2020 45 Grandma’s Chair, 2019 46 ​ Photograph of my Grandmother’s Fossil 46

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