House to Home

home has always seemed like an idea that is out of reach. I call places home, but the feeling of really belonging in a place or with a group of people has never stuck. My brain injury in the spring of 2019 rapidly increased these feelings of not wholly belonging to a certain place and group. Through this latest installation of a crafted home, I wanted to merge the documented history of my childhood with present explorations of imagined spaces. The outer structure of the home is made from paper and frottage rubbings from danish oil mixed with collected dust, grime, dirt and shop metal shavings from my childhood home in Wisconsin and my current apartment. The rubbings mix the work of assisting my dad in his shop during childhood to the rigors of everyday life. The danish oil is primarily used as a finish on furniture as well. Inside the space, the walls are made from white butcher paper and installed with tape. The paper thin walls flex and move with people as they travel through the room and provide screens for projection inside the closet. Paper cut scollages and a projection show movement of myself creating structures and a history for my work. The scollages speak of the memory objects hold when they no longer exist. Peeking into the closet shows the video moving on the actual scollages and a behind-the-scenes look, similar to set design in theater productions. Next to the closet, a fuse box opens to a house shaped clock that has been stopped just before 3:30pm. This time references when the accident that caused my brain injury occurred in 2019, and like a fuse box, insinuates control over power to the room and what is seen. My own bed frame fills the back wall of the space and the remains of a previously stacked bookshelf define a seemingly abandoned space. A video projection of scrapbooks filled with childhood photos disappear, reappear, and move throughout the video to represent the sustainability of memory: what is true, what is forgotten, and what is fabricated. The carpet, drip ceiling, and scattered home amenities in the room create a more site specific installation of the comforts of home and the tension of something lost and forgotten.