2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant
United Tessellations: Hexagonal Floor Installation (with the third-graders of Northside Elementary School, St. James MN. Reused corrugated cardboard and paper, markers, crayons and colored pencil, various objects, 126 x 90 x 4”. Thursday, February 27th, 2025.
It was an honor to be a 2024 recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant. For many years my work centered on modular, architectural pieces created from reused materials resulting from my own consumption. My primarily goal had been to underline the enormous impact of one persons career as a consumer. Increasingly, I began to realize the problem of overconsumption and pollution as a communal one, and one that could not be solved by an individual working alone. In response to this realization, the form of these works began to shift to being more interactive and collaborative. Pieces such as Archival Structure 5, Archival Structure 7, and Archival Structure 14 all included an aspect of collaboration, where friends and family, fellow artists, and members of my audience and followers are invited to contribute objects and even artworks to modular pieces that then accrued to become larger architectural and sculptural forms.
Reliquaries 10, conserved paperboard and corrugated cardboard packaging, collaborator-created artworks (mixed media), dimensions variable, this version 70 x 220 x 5”, 2024-Current (ongoing).
My 2025 Creative Individuals Grant was an opportuhity to extend this enquiry into a new body of work, experiment with a new architectural form, and find new ways to collaborate. Beginning with my exhibition Foreign Correspondent in 2021, I became interested in incorporating breeze block as an architectural component of a modular work. This exhibition, which was mounted in Gimpo-Si in 2021, included a work insprired by the American Embassy in Seoul-a structure dominated by a breezeblock facade.
Reliquaries 10, conserved paperboard and corrugated cardboard packaging, collaborator-created artworks (mixed media), dimensions variable, this version 70 x 220 x 5”, 2024-Current (ongoing).
Breezeblock—the decorative architectural brick popularized in mid-century modern design—seemed like a perfect form in which to incorporate small artistic collaborations.
I settled on a classic breezeblock design called ‘vista view’, due to its large, central opening.
The 5 x 5 x 5 “ cavity at the center of each brick serves as the perfect repository for a collaborative work. As I began to develop this piece, I received the excellent news that I was chosen to present a solo installation at Elon University in North Carolina in August of 2024. I decided to make this exhibition the first experiment in using Reliquaries 10 as a collaborative piece. Working with the art faculty at Elon—a private college in north-central North Carolina, we selected three classes who would be my collaborators on this piece: a beginning painting class, a collage course, and and art theory class.
This was a fruitful collaboration. Students presented a variety of novel solutions to populating the central space, and the instructors added unique elements to the process.
Archival Structure 10 (Student collaboration: Beginning Painting, Elon University). Found objects, paint, 3 × 3 × 1/4”, 2024.
Michael Fel’s Beginning Painting classes used the work of Robert Rauschenberg as inspiration to create sculptures that incorporated painting. Some students selected and then painted found objects, others—as was the case with this butterfly—created found-object assemblages and then painted them.
Archival Structure 10 (Beginning Painting, Elon University), mixed media and paint, 3 × 2.5 x 2”, 2024.
Archival Structure 10 (Collage and Mixed Media Class, Elon University), post-consumer and natural objects, 3 × 2.5 × 2.5”, 2024.
Micah Daw’s students created conserved, post consumer-object works. Inspired by the pieces I created on my residency at Joshua Tree Highlands in 2020, some students also incorporated plants and other natural materials.
Reliquaries 10: Student Version. Corrugated cardboard, mixed media and found objects, dimensions variable, 2025.
The second component of my Creative Individuals Grant was a new collaboration the students of Northside Elementary in St. James MN. I have been helping students at Northside to create post-consumer artworks for over a decade. After many years of working with second graders, 2024 marked my first year collaborating with the 3rd grade classes.
Students were provided a flat, corrugated cardboard blank divided into 6 foldable areas. They were tasked with decorating this template with colored media and recycled collage elements. When folded and taped together with an attached tab, this blank becomes a three-dimensional cell.
Students were also tasked with bringing to the event a small object of importance to them: a photograph, toy, memento, sports or hobby object, etc—anything that reminds them of a significant event, person, or group. I was impressed with both the variety of significant objects and the artistic approaches to decorating the cells.
The grant period concluded with a public presentation on Thursday October 27th 2-3 pm at Northside Elementary in St. James. I shared examples of the Breezeblock version of Reliquaries 10, as well as the finished installation of the hexagonal version created by the 3rd graders.
It was wonderful to meet all the students’ parents and to hear the students share the meaning behind the objects they chose.
As always, the most satisfying part of these projects is witnessing the students dawning realization of the power of collective action. In particular, I love to see them appreciating that an artwork can be both personal and collective in its meaning and power. It is always my hope that this realization can be translated into an understanding of the importance of our collective effort and creativity in combating the negative aspects of overconsumption and pollution, but in a way that fosters hope and creativity.
