In the same way I use repeated brush strokes in my paintings as a way to re-present representation, I used driftwood as the empty signifier. That is to say that something so culturally loaded as a piece of driftwood is able to lose some or all of it's cultural significance with a change in context. The driftwood sort of becomes brush strokes in a giant three-dimensional painting that is about other people's paintings.
It's also really pretty and used to smell nice.
I started by building twenty modular forms or tables.
I then bolted them all together and started building a wire-frame for the basic structure.
After the wire-frame was complete, I cut all the pieces back apart and moved the entire assembly to it's exhibition space. Where I bolted it back together. Again.
After I had it all reassembled I began skinning the surface. This was probably the hardest part of the whole project. I spent a LOT of time bent over picking up driftwood and fastening each piece with bailing wire. There was a good photo of me working on it taken by Ari Marcopoulos but I've gone and lost it...
...anyway, my hands and back were beat to shit and I was also living off of energy drinks and In-n-out, and sleeping in my studio at school - I wouldn't take it back for anything.
all done!
photo courtesy of K. Acconci :)
and then I moved the whole thing once more to it's current (and final) home in Palos Verdes, but I don't have any photos of that for you...
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