Hand-built bowl using engobe and letter stamps. "BORING ART" is stamped across the surface, with three white dots along the base referring to "Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line". Baldessari died the day I was taking my first hand-building class. I'd fantasized about being in a class led by Baldessari after reading descriptions of them, and I made this bowl to honor his influence and kindness.
The full phrase around the bowl reads "THEY CALLED ME A SANDNIGGER SO CAN I USE THE N WORD NOW?". It is a question that came to my head after being called a sandnigger by some Texas cops while detained in Lousiana (long story). Indian immigrants have largely existed outside the Black/white dynamic that characterizes the often-simplistic race discussions in America. As such, there is often a certain amount of identity confusion as first-generation immigrants create their own American identities.
I'm trying to make these melting cell phone screens, each one has a word from the phrase TAYLOR SWIFT VOTED FOR DONALD TRUMP on it. I really like thinking about how language and culture and memes evolve over the internet and the seeming impermanence of this. I want to figure out how to get the phones to replicate the color of the iMessage blue bubbles but don't know how to do it and don't have an access to a kiln.
This was prompted by Taeyoon Choi, one of my previous professors, who had a challenge to put together a list of 50 words or phrases that have been meaningful to you. I tried to put them together as a poem, I imagine after I can fire it that it'll stand a bit like a John McCracken somewhere where I can be privately embarrassed about it.
Made these during a handbuilding class, I was interested in sexting and also tried to reference the blue bubble color which didn't really turn out. One says COK, B9ALLS, 9SS, the other one says PUSSV, T1TS, 9SS. I only like them so-so, especially aesthetically, but there's something in there that is interesting I want to tease out.
These are little medallions that I have been working on as part of a performance piece meant to take place in LA when we are past COVID. I want to figure out how to make very high gloss, fancy-looking, seductive pendants/necklaces that I gift to the person that I am talking to when I determine that an art space is more than 50% white. The pendant will be in a box that has a message explaining what happened as well as a note about the provenance of the clay and the land it came from.
