rebuilt

My Swedish immigrant grandfather was a patternmaker in Chicago who precisely carved objects out of wood to be cast. I continue to work within this lineage by recasting constructed central objects out of the found photographed surfaces of wood, glass, steel and stone. In this “rebuilt” series the skin of these shapes transforms and repurposed them into archetypal forms: e.g. a house, a pulpit, a stove, a water basin. We bring to them our own inventory of objects, embedded with memory and mystery.

John Yau on Martin Puryear’s objects writes that there is “a curiosity about how certain forms are embedded with a history that can be passed from one individual or generation to the next; the realization that no matter how much can be seen, something more remains hidden to us.”

Hyperallergic, January 23, 2021