Artist & Author

Put-Ons

Remixing a practice that has involved shapes, silhouettes, and symbols with the t-shirt format I use in my apparel brand experiment Custom Flotilla, the objects in the “Put-Ons” series reveal, disguise, and perform. They are flat sculptures/assemblages made of thin plywood and fabric, paint, gold leaf, fishing net, found artwork, and more. Each one is named after a song and, like a song, creates a self-contained world where object and viewer can try on an idea or emotion, or put on an attitude or a persona. They form an exciting bridge from my conceptual work to a new, material-first approach. They have stepped into the Superman phone booth as representations and emerged as identities, turning the cultural symbol of the t-shirt inside-out.

To hear the songs the pieces are named after, go to the Spotify playlist “Put-Ons at NIAD“.

The fourteen pieces in this series (that have been made so far) were exhibited at NIAD Art Center, Richmond, Calif., in June 2019.