Inventory Project,  2005 -2018

Ornament & Object Permanance
Laser cut paper, sceenprint, riso, etc.

Man appears everywhere impressed with the beauties of Nature which surround him, and seeks to imitate to the extent of his power.
- Owen Jones

The Grammar of Ornament, first published in 1856 by Owen Jones, was an admirable attempt to collect and categorize the totality of known decorative art. The book is condensed collection of colorful plates meant as a guide and resource to students of design and architecture o ering readers an omniscient view of world of decorative arts from the 19th century.

Motor Lodge ( and within it came a people) 2011

Montclair Art Museum
Installation Laurie Staircase.
Museum Vinyl, 3M reflective tape

Project Curator - Gary Schneider
Photography - Peter Jacobs

Motorlodge is a site specific vinyl installation for the Montclair Art Museum. The piece was inspired by MAM’s permanent collection, Andy Warhol’s car crash series and pottery from the museums extensive Indigenous art collection. 

The automotive icons and detritus scattered here are both litter and artifact. The scene references simultaneously a forensic crash site investigation, an archeological dig, and the rusted springs and hubcaps that lie in every roadside culvert. The American automotive industry has a long tradition of stealing from Native American culture. Every Pontiac, Winnebago, and Jeep Grand Cherokee seeks to evoke the majesty of a Western expanse they eventually helped to pave and demystify. The hunting paths of the Choctaw became cattle trails and railway lines that evolved into our interstate highway system. These mufflers and cup holders are a legacy we leave for future generations of anthropologists to discover and decipher, to make assumptions about our diets, travels, ritual, and culture.

Eureka ! 2017


MetroNorth Fordham Station / Bronx
Powder Coated Cut Aluminum
Photos: Brian Kelly

''From the one particle, as a center, let us suppose to be irradiated spherically -- in all directions -- to immeasurable but still to de nite distances in the previously vacant space -- a certain inexpressibly great yet limited number of unimaginably yet not in nitely minute atoms.’’

Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka, 1848

Writing from his small cottage in what is now the Bronx, a hundred years ahead of our scientic understanding of the origins of the universe, Poe drew the outlines of the event we call "the big bang." His description is startlingly astute for a writer with neither the scientic knowledge nor the necessary technical equipment to test theories of creation. While a poet's thoughts often remain undiscovered or ignored by the scientic community, Poe's idea makes sense on an aesthetic level to anyone who has looked closely at how flower petals bloom from a bud. Nature grows and expands along mysteriously pervasive rules of proportion. Life unfurls and expands fractally in ferns, cacti, and pine cones. Seeds and tree branches grow in beautiful symmetry, radiating outward. Nature persists in making sense of our surroundings, and our beginnings.

Eureka is a series of four "rose windows” ; the detailed circular centerpiece of many Gothic cathedrals. Inspired by the Poe essay referenced above, and at home in the Bronx, it depicts the plants and trees of the New York Botanical Garden and references the Gothic details found in the surrounding architecture of Fordham University. The four rose windows are designed to evoke four botanical "big bangs." Succulents, orchids, bonsai, and cactus form and grow ever outward.

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SHOAL
2019

Bellmore Station / Long Island RR
Photos: Collin Hughes

Glass and tile mosaic at LIRR Bellmore. Second permantent installation for MTA Arts and Design. Mosaic features North Atlantic aquatic life as dutch pottery with Long Island imagery alongside gold flotsam. We are all commuters / migrants / settlers / invasive species.

Mosaic fabricated by Stephen Miotto & Co. Many thanks to Bridget and Yaling from MTA Arts and to the librarians of Bellmore, LI.