Resin Wall Sculptures
Photographic wall sculptures made of resin, C-prints, and board. I make these works by photographing subjects (people, objects, meat, and plants) through drops of water on glass. The water drop becomes an interstitial lens between the subject and the camera’s lens, and the water lens’ shape affects the refracted image that the camera captures. I then changes the water lens’ shapes with brushes and with forms he creates that force the water drop into specific shapes. The forms are used to make the most complex shapes. They are made from oil, laser etched glass, hydrophobic masks, and plastics.
To complete my Resin Wall Sculptures, I print out my photographs, cut them out, and dome them with resin. The resin is a viscous mixture that mimics that original shape of water from the photograph. The combination of the refracted image and the lensing effect of the resin mimics the original conditions of the photograph (water on glass) but is now permanent.
The Resin Wall Sculptures are works in perpetual transformation, with the subject of each piece in motion due to the property of water both as material and subject matter in the work. What is emerging from these transformations are monsters, gods, and new organisms made from once-familiar ones.
Rainbow Demon
2020-2021
60” D
Resin, photograph, board
The rainbow colors in Rainbow Demon are very tightly compacted, like mixing a multicolored taffy until it blurs into noise. Cheeky, mythic, and uncanny, the Demons appear on the wall like talismans. The series are large, puzzled collages of resin-domed photographs. What separates them from the other resin-domed wall sculptures is they are faces made of faces. Created by shooting hundreds of expressions from grins to grimaces through droplets of water, the demons smirk at the viewer as they quite literally possess our myriad micro-expressions and mercurial moods in the many resin drops that make up their features.
Smile Demon
2020-2021
60” D
Resin, photograph, board
Smile Demon is a reference to the smiling yellow icon that has been popular since the 1960s. This is a self portrait, with the face painted yellow. Like a cluster of emoji melted into a terrifying smiling sun, Smile Demon is kind of grinning god that contains multitudes.
Kissing Underwater
2015-2018
36” by 18”
Resin, photograph, board
Skittles
2020-2021
30” D
Resin, photograph, board
Model painted red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
Ophanim
2020
30” D
Resin, photograph, board
Models include a closeup photo of an eye and Mud Golem (Wet)
The Ophanim comes from the Book of Revelation and is composed of swirling arms and hundreds of eyes. Here my Ophanim is made of mud, eyeballs, and faces.
Pink Water Portrait 1
2019
14.0 by 20.7 inches / 36 by 53 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
Model painted pink.
A new organism.
Green Water Portrait 1
2019
12.7 by 18.8 inches / 32 by 48 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board.
Model painted green.
Meat Water Figure 4
2019
16.0 by 35.6 inches / 41 by 90 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
The subject was a piece of raw steak.
The concept behind these meat and plant works come from DNA seed vaults like the Svalbard vault store species of seeds in order to protect biodiversity in agriculture. I imagines these pieces as a collection of the DNA of plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria. It’s a a world full of cows and people and chickens and agricultural plants and not a lot else. In a time after all the tigers, flying insects, sharks, and tuna have died, we will have less information and less raw material to construct our world. I imagine shuffling and combining these few remaining materials, such as cow steak and houseplants, to make new organisms.
Leaf Water Figure 1
2019
24.6 by 28.9 inches / 63 by 73 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
The subject was a leaf.
Yellow Water Portrait 1
2019
16.2 by 20.7 inches / 32 by 52 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
The model was painted yellow
Lime Water Portrait 1
2019
13.7 by 20.4 inches / 35 by 52 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
Meat Water Figure 2
2019
11.9 by 22.1 inches / 30 by 56 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
The subject was a piece of raw steak.
Leaf Water Figure 2
2019
9.7 by 25.8 inches / 25 by 66 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
The subject was a leaf.
Pink Water Portrait 2
2019
14.5 by 21.4 inches / 37 by 54 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
Green Water Portrait 2
2019
12.0 by 18.4 inches / 30 by 47 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
Meat Water Figure 1
2019
7.4 by 15.6 inches / 19 by 40 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
The subject was a piece of raw steak.
Emerald Water Portrait 1
2019
14.4 by 25.9 inches / 36 by 66 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
Meat Water Figure 3
2019
17.5 by 29.3 inches / 45 by 75 centimeters
Resin, photograph, board
The subject was a piece of raw steak.
Water Portraits
2014-2015
This series were all portraits of friends living in Portland Maine. Each picture transforms the face into a new organism. The resin-coated photographed are adhered directly to the wall.
Splatter
2014
437 individual photographs of my face refracted in water, cut out, and domed with resin. The installation and scale is variable.
I made this for a traveling solo show at XPO Gallery Paris and TRANSFER Gallery NYC in 2015.
This was the first work I made by photographing through water on glass. I rigged a camera over a bed, and laid on my back for a week moving water around to collect each individual droplet. I think of Splatter as my “seminal” work—quite literally replicating myself as series of globs. The work also has a horror element to it, with the individual pieces slithering up the wall as if they are going to re-form back into one body. As Walt Whitman said, “I am large—I contain multitudes.”
