S C U L P T U R E
Selected works which explore incorporating printmaking, painting, and drawing into sculptural formats.
A S P I R I T H O U S E F O R T H E G R E E N G H O S T S O F W A R
This piece combines Buddhist animist beliefs from Thailand and Burma of spirit houses and green ghosts. Across Southeast Asia it is widely believed that the spirit realm plays a consequential role in everyday life. It is traditional to leave daily offerings of rice, fruit, drinks, flowers, incense, or votives for the spirits at a “spirit house”. If they are neglected it could bring misfortune to the occupants of the land, house, or business.
About spirit houses: In Thai, these small structures are called ศาลพระภูมิ, (pronounced san phra phum), which translates to, “house of the guardian spirit.” In Burmese, spirits are known as Nats, and their spirit houses are called နတ်စင် (nat sin).
About green ghosts: In Thai, ผีตายโหง (phi tai hong), means “ghost of someone who dies an unnatural and violent death.” These restless souls may not even know that they are ghosts, as they were unable to prepare themselves to die. Oftentimes they did not receive proper funerary rites, and haunt nearby to where they were killed. In Burma, these spirits are known as Green Ghosts, or အစိမ်းရောင်သရဲ.
Because green ghosts wander and do not know peace, my intention was to create a place for them to rest. I wanted to make a small mausoleum-type structure for innocent civilian casualties caught in the violent crossfire of war; landmine victims, persecuted minorities, forgotten fatalities.
This piece also represents the overlapping cultures along the Thailand-Burma border, where I lived and worked with migrant youth and refugees from Burma. Just over the border in Karen State, is the longest running civil war in modern history (71 years!) I wanted this sculpture to reflect that cultural interconnection in the region, so “Green Ghosts” in the title represents Burma, and the Thai script ผี (ghost), was gilded on the inside of the spirit house door in authentic 24k gold leaf from Mandalay, Burma.
It is not uncommon to see landmine victims around Mae Sot, Thailand, and when I lived there, I drew this blind landmine victim reaching upwards, unaware that he is interacting with a green ghost. On the opposite side is a child’s skull from a recent monotype about Cyclone Nargis. The inside of the spirit house is painted a fiery, bright blood red, which glows at night by a votive placed inside of it.
Z E B R A
This piece is part of a body of work entitled, “The Cataclysm of Colonialism,” which, in part, examines the relationship between our vanishing natural world and the colonialist mindset that our planet was made for humanity to consume and profit from, at all costs and without repercussion.
Over the past couple of years I have been exploring ways to combine my love of traditional printmaking with my other interests, like woodworking, sculpture, painting, photography, and using technology to create new work.
This was an interesting piece for me in that the culmination of the work is a limited edition of prints of a photograph— but to get there was akin to piecing together a puzzle, with each step requiring the completion of details executed in very different media. It is also likely the only composition I have made continually referencing the canvas borders through a camera lens.
This work features a carved wooden Dala-style zebra on a wooden structure / diorama with a painted papier-mâché landscape. The diorama features aspects which were made of painted, red clay— like an elephant femur and a distant baobab tree, also known as the “tree of life.” The palm tree is constructed of wood and cut paper. The backdrop featuring a vista of mountains and sky was painted with sumi ink and gouache, and then printed to scale. My intention was to print it in sharp focus, but fit the image to the diorama in such a way that when I photographed it in natural light, it had the aesthetic of a black and white colonial era photograph, with the landscape becoming softer as it recedes in space.