Artifacts from The Present, Perhaps Time Will Be Understood
I hope that if you, some ethnographer, are tasked to piece this all together, that you might be able to discern what happened here. Time and process has collapsed on these specimens. They have been pulled, cut, dropped, plopped, glazed, hardened, foiled, and made sample from a landscape between reality and fantasy.
I try to get a grasp on place, like how good it feels to know the weight of a rock in your hand. Time has been fizzling differently since March 2020, I can’t get a good sense of the rate. Too many cancellations, launches, and artificialities followed by acceptance, abandonment, and adaptation. Little direction given, no notable beginning or foreseeable end, only I was capturine some evidence in detritus. I was curious about the direct material and chemical impact of the sculptures I was working with in my studio.
In collaboration with the University of Iowa’s Geology department, I sent material samples to be tested with portable x-ray fluorescence analysis (PXRF) for a number of major and trace elements on all 16 sculptures. PXRF measures the composition of the very surface of things, so for the resin sculptures, the data represent a hybrid composition of the resin and the objects contained within. Theelements were analyzed with the concentrations given on parts per million (PPM). Detecting fair amount of Vanadium and chromium in resins. The twig with rock-like base had plenty of Rubidium and Strontium. The marbles in resin sculpture had a tiny amounts of Arsenic, Lead, and Cadmium.
