Alone
This 4 ft wide by 42 ft long walkway was made of small bottles embedded into a wood frame that was laquered a mirror black. The bottles were left open, and slips of paper were provided for audience members to write their names and put them in the bottles. At the end of the installation, the bottles were sealed with wax.
Alone
This 4 ft wide by 42 ft long walkway was made of small bottles embedded into a wood frame that was laquered a mirror black. The bottles were left open, and slips of paper were provided for audience members to write their names and put them in the bottles. At the end of the installation, the bottles were sealed with wax.
Blades of Grass
This installation of 14 2 ft x 6 ft plots of grass (made of aluminum and wood) was originally created for an annual art show, Artists Against AIDS, which sold artwork to help AIDS victims pay for medical treatment. It was intended to bring home the immensity of the problem, in that each blade of grass represented a child (under 12 years old) that died of AIDS the previous year. Just like the United Nations statistics, these are estimates, showing that the problem is so huge that numbers completely remove us from the reality of the situation. The grass was alive, and grew until it seeded, then died, then reseeded itself over the course of approximately 4 months.
Blades of Grass (detail)
This installation of 14 2 ft x 6 ft plots of grass (made of aluminum and wood) was originally created for an annual art show, Artists Against AIDS, which sold artwork to help AIDS victims pay for medical treatment. It was intended to bring home the immensity of the problem, in that each blade of grass represented a child (under 12 years old) that died of AIDS the previous year. Just like the United Nations statistics, these are estimates, showing that the problem is so huge that numbers completely remove us from the reality of the situation. The grass was alive, and grew until it seeded, then died, then reseeded itself over the course of approximately 4 months.
GDP and Population Statistics (2003)
This piece, made of aluminum, copper, and wood, visually represented the political realities of population and wealth in the world. Height represented gross domestic product, and area of the cylinders represented population. The tall (almost 10 ft) cylinder is the United States, the large low cylinder is China. While you can also see the UK and Germany, countries like Zambia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba have such low GDPs that they in some cases were thinner than a single sheet of copper, and so can barely be seen in this image.
God Does Not Play Dice
These 4 ft x 4 ft dice were made of styrofoam and paper mache. They were intended to be played with by audiences (which did in fact happen, as well as being used as huge benches or tables). Once someone got close, they could see that the paper mache was of tiny text, in this case the UN AIDS Report, discussing the national security and geopolitical threat that AIDS represents. The idea was that our lives and our privilege are due to luck; while according to Einstein "God does not play dice with the universe," it is hard to see these tragedies as anything but random.