Ejecta

Description

Ejecta
Installed at the Portland Museum of Art for the 2011 Biennial
Clay, Ink

Ejecta is a dense aggregation of tiny trumpet-shaped vessels whose expanded extremities burst open to reveal a dark void-space within. Each unit is formed by hand, lending an organic sensibility to a minimal composition. Ejecta's overall arrangement mimics the dark middle and blanching edge of each smaller particle creating a perceptual oscillation between positive and negative space, surface and depth, and micro and macro scales. The title is taken from the term used to describe the debris expelled from a meteorite impact, a stellar explosion, or a volcanic eruption. Though the forms were inspired by images capturing such events mid-bast, the delicate objects evoke a variety of readings - a field of exotic flowers, a surface of multiplying mushrooms, a wall riddled with bullet-holes, or hundreds of miniature craters amassed to form one large one. The installation explores the interdependent relationship between interior and exterior, material and void, and embraces the problem of understanding the pervasive, apparently empty space that lies in-between all scales of matter.

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