Ghost Pearls + Epiphenomena

Saturday, June 10, 2-6pm

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The event will feature a 9 x 8 foot architectural sculpture made from 1000 pieces of individually cut mirror woven into a form of lace, titled Ghost Pearls.

Ghost Pearls explores spaces of connection and mediation. The work is based on research into local and historical forms of lace-making, early digital art, and contemporary virtual space. It references lace in the collection of the Fairview Museum, UT; conversations with lace-makers; historical links between lace, value, and time; the 1964 digital artwork Ninety Parallel Sinusoids with Linearly Increasing Period by A. Michael Noll; and works of the Light and Space movement. The work was the subject of a recent solo exhibition at Granary Arts.

Also on view, a popup tabletop exhibition of works by Rita McBride, Alice Könitz, Scott Benzel, and Tanya Brodsky, titled Epiphenomena. Each of these small-scale sculptures gives rise to second-order phenomena, such as reflectivity, state changes, and other experiential properties. With materials that range from dry ice to electronics, their emergent phenomena hint at the mutable nature of perception and presence.

New in the studio—a laser cut on holographic paper, based on my sculpture Ghost Pearls. Looks like I’ll be having a viewing event for the full-scale Ghost Pearls architectural sculpture as an open studio a bit later this year.

In conjunction with my exhibition Ghost Pearls at Granary Arts, UT, I’ve been releasing a series of fully digital studies that further expand ideas touched on within the show. The third and final work is Oolite.

Digital Study #8 (Oolite), 2023

This study encodes information found in a historic 1856 ledger, expressing and reimagining that data as a transparent glass sculpture.

The ledger was kept by the women-owned and operated Ephraim Relief Society. It recorded the amount of eggs donated by members to support the Society’s charitable activities in the community.

At the time, within the local community eggs were considered a cash equivalent, and could be freely exchanged for goods and services.

Oolite is a sedimentary rock composed of spherical grains; its name derives from the Ancient Greek word for egg.

Millions of years ago, oolite formed as microscopic debris were tossed by wind and waves across shallow areas of the Great Salt Lake, gradually accumulating layers of calcium carbonate, much like pearls.

Oolitic limestone is endemic in the region, and has been used as a building material for many historic structures, including Granary Arts, where this work has been hosted, supported, and shown.

This series has explored ways in which economic structures, purpose, and community can be linked; and forms by which voice can be transmitted across time.

In conjunction with my ongoing exhibition Ghost Pearls at Granary Arts, UT, I’m releasing a series of fully digital studies that further expand ideas touched on within the show. This series explores ways in which economic structures, purpose, and community can be linked; and forms by which voice can be transmitted across time. The second in this series of three works is Gift Waves.

Digital Study #7 (Gift Waves), 2023

As Granary Arts Fellow, I researched histories of lace in Ephraim, UT. One afternoon, the local artist Julie Johnson invited me to lunch at her home, shared her lace-making practice, taught me basic stitches, and gifted me a piece she had made. During the residency, I was also researching archival material relating to the Ephraim Relief Society—a unique, women-owned and operated organization that played a key role in Ephraim’s history—and in particular, the ledgers the Relief Society kept from ~1856-1950 to record their significant charitable activities across the community. These interests were connected, as both lace and ledgers are formats for encoding value and time.

In this digital study, the physical lace Julie Johnson gifted to me is reimagined as a virtual column made of transparent, woven glass links. With the spirit of exchange, this work is gifted to her.