From a soul is not made of atoms; text by curator Dr. Adrienne Fast

“The shored lines book works appear very different from another body of work displayed nearby, titled the relics (2015-ongoing), but they actually have a great deal in common thematically. Part of a larger series, four relics are displayed in the exhibition, each one consisting of a small diorama placed inside an “infinity box” made from five sides of surveillance Plexiglass, with a light source concealed in its plinth underneath. When illuminated, each box creates an outwardly expanding repetition of reflected pattern that seems to extend forever into an indeterminate space. The patterns appear to be projected into infinity — not only into infinite space, but also by implication into infinite time.

Each diorama creates a pattern that the artist sees as embodying a particular anxiety of the present moment. For example, one relic contains a series of menacing black spikes that forms a “landscape of repulsion” based on a mockup of a conceptual landscape of concrete thorns proposed to be built over the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste disposal site, intended to warn future generations (or future species) away from a site of danger. Another relic contains a piece of uranium infused slag glass, and another contains miniature versions of pink flamingo lawn ornaments; those perfect metaphors for the human tendency to replace actual nature with plastic copies of it. The focus of all of the relics is on non-biodegradable materials that will become part of the future geological record of our Anthropocene era. Certainly, the idea of populating infinite space and time with the anxieties of the present is disturbing, but the relics are also hauntingly beautiful, even vulnerable, in their glittering delicacy.”