Recent Sculpture 2014 -2018
These sculptures were recently on view in an exhibition called All This Land at the Chicago Academy of Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. You can read the wall text and captions for the work in the show's digital catalog and view the installation on the Exhibition Views page.
                                                                Cartoon Box Trap (Kill the Wabbit)
                         Disassembled and reassembled cardboard shipping container, hand-printed wood grain on rice
​                           paper, found cryptobiotic soil pigment (Utah), ashwood stick, and raw jute twine: 10.5 x 18 x 8 in.
                            Cartoon Box Trap (Kill the Wabbit) front
          Cartoon Box Trap (Kill the Wabbit) detail     
                                                            Equivalents (or The Weight of Things) 
                                           Two early-1970s, cast and kiln-fired fake “rocks” (for interior wall decoration),
                                           newly chiseled, filed, and repainted to appear nearly identical, 11 x 22 x 5 in.
                                                                                    The River (Migrations) 
                          Water-tumbled “glacial erratic” stones encrusted with toxic mining sludge (Colorado): 6 x 26 x 14 in.
                                                                            Tales of Adventure (front)  
                                  Stacked hardbound fiction and biography books caked in 285-million-year-old, fossiliferous
                                  ocean sediments (Kansas), Atlantic dogwinkle snails, and silver nail polish: 30 x 18 x 15 in.      

                                                                        Tales of Adventure (reverse) 
                                 Stacked hardbound fiction and biography books caked in 285-million-year-old, fossiliferous
                                  ocean sediments (Kansas), Atlantic dogwinkle snails, and silver nail polish: 30 x 18 x 15 in. 
                                                                     Tales of Adventure (details) 
                                 Stacked hardbound fiction and biography books caked in 285-million-year-old, fossiliferous
                                  ocean sediments (Kansas), Atlantic dogwinkle snails, and silver nail polish: 30 x 18 x 15 in.
                                                                                      Harbingers (installation view)
                               Two pounds of bituminous coal fragments, industrial canary cages, and Chicago Academy of
                         Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum bird specimens ORN-3385 and ORN-1172: 14 x 38 x 15 in.  ​
                                                                             Harbingers (studio view)
                                Two pounds of bituminous coal fragments, industrial canary cages, and Chicago Academy of
                           Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum bird specimens ORN-3385 and ORN-1172: 14 x 38 x 15 in. 
                                                                                  Work Clothes 
                                            Decayed late-1800s coal-mining artifacts (Braceville, Illinois), folded cotton
                                          shirt and pants soaked in burnt, oxidized shale overburden: 31 x 20.5 x 10 in.
                                                                          Work Clothes (detail)
                                            Decayed late-1800s coal-mining artifacts (Braceville, Illinois), folded cotton 
                                          shirt and pants soaked in burnt, oxidized shale overburden: 31 x 20.5 x 10 in.
                                                  Artifacts include mule shoes, hooks, a pick-ax head, railroad spikes,
                                                         nails, pulley wheels, washers, and a lamp sticking tommy. 
                                                    Elixir 
   Clear wine bottle and cork, gold-painted Atlantic barnacles, white           ink, ocean sediments, and 30-weight engine oil: 13 x 4 x 4 in. 
                         Elixir (detail) 
Adult acorn barnacles Semibalanus balanoides are enclosed in a calcareous shell. The volcano shaped shell consists of a basal part cemented to the stony substrate; a wall composed of six non-movable plates and one or two pairs of movable plates at the top that allow the barnacle to seal itself from the outside environment during periods of stress or alarm. The movable plates can be separated to allow protrusion of the thoracic limbs, and the cirri, for feeding. These barnacle shells were collected in 2018 on a rocky beach in northern Maine.