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A toy watering can in my grad school studio became an object of particular interest with its mimetic design as a tool- a vessel with the specific purpose to collect and in turn disperse a resource. This idea/image resonated for me with my experience of being a student- gaining (filling up) ideas/knowledge in order to hypothetically be of use in some tangible way. My acknowledgement that obtaining a resource can become the end game in a kind of circular activity is reflected in drawings of “self-watering” cans in "Happy Hour- Academically Speaking", and "Colorfast".

In the second iteration of the Splash series, I focus on form and color in beach toys abandoned like plastic relics of summer’s interest. I redeploy them as metaphors for the phenomenon of becoming a celebrity. Here color ‘works’ as the labor done to gain entry for media notice. The essential form/self is obfuscated or complicated in the venture of becoming colorful tools at service to our need for distraction.

2007 Happy Hour (Academically Speaking)
2007 Happy Hour (Academically Speaking)
acrylic, inkwash, and charcoal on paper
40 x 33"
2007