Tool-things: The Making of an Apprentice represents the beginning of an apprentice’s toolkit, one that can be read as evolving in parallel to the knowledge gained through its making. This work taps into the human connection to tools by focusing on some of the most familiar ones: the hammer, screwdriver, clamp, and handsaw. Most of these tool-things have been meticulously made from metal and wood to be almost indistinguishable from the everyday, readymade objects they sit alongside, and both are seen in an unexpected light. Paused during a process of metamorphosis, somewhere between the familiar and alien, they encourage us to question what comes first: the knowledge, or the tool? Potentially sparking frustration in their apparent uselessness, Tool-things ask us to look a little longer–it could just be that we don't yet recognize their use.
“We shape our tools thereafter our tools shape us.” John M. Culkin
AN APPRENTICE'S WORKBENCH
HAMMER 1
Cast bronze, hand carved hard maple, and 10" spike / 2017
HAMMER 2
Cast bronze and hand carved hard maple / 2017
HAMMER 3
Cast bronze and hand carved hard maple / 2017
HAMMER 4
Cast bronze and hand carved hard maple / 2017
HAMMER 5
Cast bronze and hand carved hard maple / 2017
HAMMER 6
Cast bronze and hand carved hard maple / 2018
HOLD THAT THOUGHT
c-clamp, clear 40w A-lamp, socket, aircraft cable, lamp cord & radial dimmer / 2017
ALL TOOTH
Water jet stainless steel and walnut / 2018
THE HARDER I WORK THE CLEARER I SEE MYSELF
Water jet, hand polished stainless steel and walnut / 2018
UNDER PRESSURE
Vice, paper, and pencil
RED TOOLBOX, EMPTY?
MIG welded 1/8” cold rolled steel rod, spray paint & nickel-plated hardware / 2017
RED TOOLBOX, FULL?
TIG welded 18ga. Cold rolled steel sheet, spray paint & nickel-plated hardware / 2017
SCREWDRIVER I
2018
SCREWDRIVER II
2018
SCREWDRIVER III
2018
SCREWDRIVER IIII
2018
SCREWDRIVER i
2018
SCREWDRIVER V
2018
SCREWDRIVER X
2018
STORAGE ROOM
Installation detail from Tool-things: the Making of an Apprentice at IGNITE Gallery / 2018
FASTENERS
Hand carved walnut, cherry, and hard maple / 2018
DRIP
Hand carved paint brush / 2018
SCREWDRIVER HANDLE
hand carved basswood / 2017
INVERTED TOOLS
polished, cast aluminum, hand carved and laser cut basswood, 1/4” acrylic rod (iteration on found peg board) / 2017
PARTS AND HOLES
Laser cut 1/4” Masonite / 2017
HAMMER THING - REMNANTS OF AN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND HEIDEGGER
action resulting in the production of 8.5” x 11”, 11ga. polished aluminum sheet & 3.5min video loop / 2017
SOCKET SET
Silicone rubber
AN ESCAPE LADDER FOR ALAN
found objects, black parachute cord, spray paint & light bulb / 2016
In a corridor of identical steel doors, an ominous light beams out from beneath one. Approaching, you think "What the f$&* is in there?" Inner Light plays on this insatiable human curiosity; it amplifies the murmurs of the things, stuff, and junk that lay dormant within these corrugated metal boxes, but also the stuff, junk and things that echo inside our own heads.
But this box is empty. No stuff. No things. No Junk. Physically at least. In here, there is only light, truck loads of light. It fills every crevasse of the otherwise mundane fifty square foot storage unit. You squint your eyes. It’s hard to see. Could what’s behind those doors ever be as exciting or bizarre as what we are capable of imagining? Inner Light represents an attempt to hold onto something fleeting, inanimate, impossible. It may not make sense, but it inspires curiosity. About stuff. About things. About Junk. About ourselves.
Inner Light was a temporary site specific installation created for Holding Patterns, a group exhibition curated by Art Spin Toronto.
Completed in July 2017 as part of the Working Artist Residency Program (WARP) at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. The installation reinvigorates the site of recently demolished cottages that housed visiting artists in the early years of the park. This architectural intervention reconnects the remaining eleven concrete foundation pads of the former cottages, both physically, by ten new wooden footpaths and gateways, and also figuratively, by tying together the park's past and present relationship to the visual arts.
http://www.artpark.net/warp-2017
action resulting in the production of 8.5” x 11”, 11ga. polished aluminum sheet & 3.5min video loop.
2017
PALLETTES
Cast bronze / 2016
CTRL-C
Rented scaffolding and borrowed camping equipment, 10’ x 10’ x 30’
Stills from digital video of physical installation at Ontario Place in Toronto, for IN/Future 2016
Wood, concrete, Plexiglas & paint.
Commissioned by the United Way of Ottawa.
2015
plywood, translucent Coroplast, colour changing, sound responsive LED 4-8 ft tall
For Arboretum Music Festival, Ottawa, ON
2014-15