Mortal Objects
Mortal Objects, 2018, colored pencil on dura-lar and paper, antique boxes, insects (harvested post-mortem), wisteria pod, tulip petals, tanned opossum skin, thread, approximately 10’ x 3’ x 1’
Mortal Objects explores the ways we seek to preserve and relate to nature in a personal way. The series of antique boxes would have been used to hold or display precious items, such as the jewelry casket box at the very end containing the Hercules beetle, the doll display box containing the opossum skin, or the jewelry box containing the wisteria pod.
Almost every box is paired with a drawing or cutout that reveals or preserves its contents. This pattern creates drawings that disappear into cutouts and then nothing, echoed in the empty box. The relationship of the boxes and drawings becomes confused and mixed up as the cutout drawing becomes the contents of the box and as the paper disappears. In the final pair, the pattern is re-established— a drawing with a cutout that exists precariously above the object preserved in the box.
Box 1: Wisteria pod inside earth 20th century jewelry box with drawing of wisteria pod above.
Box 2: Tulip petals in decorative glass box accompanied by drawing above with section removed and suspended on string between box and drawing.
Box 3: Cicada husks with string inside a decorative glass box with cicada husk cutouts above.
Box 4: Empty box with blank paper above.
Box 5: Cicada drawing inside an antique cloisonné box with cutout above.
Box 6: Opossum skin inside doll display box.
Box 7: Hercules beetle inside casket display box accompanied by drawing and cutout of beetle above.
Mortal Objects is part of the Nature Is A Haunted House project.