Solid Objects and the Wandering Clew

This ongoing project incorporates gleanings from daily walks through the streets and pathways near my home. I stay alert for unassuming but compelling artifacts inadvertently discarded by people, and altered by weather, traffic, time, and other incidental forces. The process is akin to urban beach-combing. Surprisingly, each walk yields new, often mysteriously unidentifiable objects not there the day previous. These accumulated fragments point to the strangeness of things that can’t quite be named and whose original uses are not immediately apparent. Dislocated from their native settings the bits and pieces allude to some overarching yet elusive meaning.

The project is inherently gendered and performative. Objects are typically collected during solitary night walks. Interactions with bystanders become an important conceptual off-shoot. These unmediated interactions suggest the perception that there is something unusual, perhaps even suspect, about meandering alone and without pragmatic purpose. The walking becomes a way to reclaim freedom, favor unstructured non-linear thought over pragmatic productivity, and expand on notions of studio practice, collaboration, and intentionality. The “Solid Objects” of the title comes from Virginia Woolf’s short story in which her protagonist abandons worldly ambition in search of beautiful but apparently worthless objects. The “Wandering Clew” references the fable of a wandering outsider; lacking a home-base or familiar anchor, even commonplace things become uncanny, de-familiarized, and laden with potential significance. Each work is 5 x 5.5 inches.

Rules for assemblages:
-Only objects made or altered by humans are collected, no entirely natural materials.
-Only fragments of things, or things that can not be clearly identified.
-Objects must remain unaltered from how they were found.
-Only objects found on the same day can be incorporated into a single work.