Featured Artworks

Pastoral Brutalism: Durational Diptych: Rope Beating Drawing (2022) Rope Beating Drawings of the Trace series are monumental private performed drawings that address the concept of trace within sites (of the body, architectures, memory). Courtesy the Artist Rope Beating Drawings of the Trace series are monumental private performed drawings that address the concept of trace within sites (of the body, architectures, memory). Utilizing elemental materials including breath, I repeatedly coat lengths of industrial rope with charcoal and beat it against a pristine white drawing paper, the force imprinting lightly and other times heavily into the paper. In some cases, the paper’s surface rips like skin and bears the rippled texture of the rope. I then attempt to suture back together with glittering black sandpaper arranged like butterfly tape on a wound, loosely so to highlight the tension and impossibility of repair. The resulting images evokes a tree branch and fire, ghostly and ephemeral, pastoral and brutal. The process is physically and emotionally demanding, speaking to the artist’s path, the notion of release, and the trace left behind.
Pastoral Brutalism: Durational Diptych: 1 year, 7 months, 9 days, 7 hours, 1 minute, 34 seconds (2024) 1 year, 7 months, 9 days, 7 hours, 1 minute, 34 seconds of the Pastoral Brutalism Trace series: Durational Diptych Courtesy the Artist 1 year, 7 months, 9 days, 7 hours, 1 minute, 34 seconds" reflects an expanded idea of duration when considered through the lens of a Black queer-identified multi-cultural/racial femme/woman and the labor and pain we bear globally in the micro and macro. Durational performance is usually framed as a specific set of hours that an artist produces within/for the gallery or museum. This work shifts the center to the artist’s process and expands the understanding of duration. The trace trauma caused by creative process is also the work with which one must contend. The rage and institutional heartbreak expressed through the creation of the original Rope Beating Drawing in 2022 activated a shoulder and neck injury that then required ongoing, daily treatment and a whole new approach to my physical ability. The gestures used to create this new work reflect the repetitive nature of this healing process and the shape of movements engaged daily to fortify the body. This project also included homeopathic bodywork and sauna care as part of the extended performance here in Switzerland as a form of reparation. The original Rope Beating Drawing plays on repeat, one component of this diptych locked in forever motion. The new work posits a return, a rescue of Sisyphus from the rhythm of the task’s never-ending trauma. Here, sacred materials of earth—herbs, soil, stone, charcoal, long grass, fragrant lotus oil, palo santo, rose spray, salt—reflect elemental foundations of the work and the site, providing grounding, illumination, release, and healing through the process of application, both privately enacted and in witness with community. Yoruba asé, catalytic life force, is activated through breath of my voice in song and echoing as visitors read poetic texts aloud, adding their trace to the air and forming a sonic “chorus” that supports and resonates with the artist and her actions, making the audience into participants rather than simply a gazing public, removing the separation of proscenium stage to embody the Black Arts Movement vision of community at the center, and pushing back against the colonial supremacist consumption within the global art world industrial complex. It shifts the responsibility of accountability for healing and repair to a collective expectation.
Gold Goat (Head, Banger) Remains of performance work: gold leaf on white sheet of paper mounted on the wall with a thick white woven sailing rope hanging overhead from clay sculpted hook Courtesy the Artist Gold Goat (Head, Banger) evokes the illumination of manuscripts in Medieval art history and the subversive layers of narrative contained within such iconographies. The repetitive gesture of banging my head against the wall loudly enough and hard enough to elicit concern, speaks to the artist’s path and to invisibility of feminine agency within both personal, artistic, and religious worlds. After the harshness of the act, all that remains is a trace of gold on both the minimalist paper ground and on the supplicant’s forehead, similarly as one might see a devotee with ash or dirt on their face from crawling in humility to the sacred site, and the darkened handprints on the floor serve also as trace evidence of the bowed positionality of the subject.
Gold Goat (Head, Banger) Remains of performance work: gold leaf on white sheet of paper mounted on the wall with a thick white woven sailing rope hanging overhead from clay sculpted hook Courtesy the Artist Gold Goat (Head, Banger) evokes the illumination of manuscripts in Medieval art history and the subversive layers of narrative contained within such iconographies. The repetitive gesture of banging my head against the wall loudly enough and hard enough to elicit concern, speaks to the artist’s path and to invisibility of feminine agency within both personal, artistic, and religious worlds. After the harshness of the act, all that remains is a trace of gold on both the minimalist paper ground and on the supplicant’s forehead, similarly as one might see a devotee with ash or dirt on their face from crawling in humility to the sacred site, and the darkened handprints on the floor serve also as trace evidence of the bowed positionality of the subject.
My Neck, My Back… Work on paper with sculptural elements, charting pain points as self-portraiture Courtesy the Artist My Neck, My Back… employs thick pristine silken sailing rope hung from clay and butcher hooks against drawing paper on which a “pain constellation” has been sketched, charting points of pain in the artist’s body as of October 2022, serving as a commemoration and illustration and, in its title, reworking the meaning of a raunchy hip-hop song to highlight physical stress rather than pleasure.
Apartment 19 Pastoral Brutalism: Trace Series: Apartment 19 video and sound installation at La Becque Residency, La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland Courtesy the Artist Video Installation at Apartment #19 Exhibited for one night at La Becque Open Studios in Fall 2022, this new work is comprised of video monitors, computer screens, and projection within the resident apartment #19 (which also happens to be one of Denenge’s lucky numbers.) The composition is a semi-analog remix of clips highlighting a range of moments, from architecture to performance both private and public, natural phenomena, and ritual acts. The curated space in which the screens are arranged becomes a site of meditation with repeated layers flowing in and out with the sound of the artist’s jazz singing and repeated whispers of “I am healed”. The light and color reflections bounce off of the space and interact with each other, blurring the lines between what is remembered and what is “real”, all together forming a sensual immersive experience that, due to to the analog timing of shared screen set-up, will never follow the same pace twice. Each video and still is a moment that will never again occur in quite the same manner. It stands as a fleeting monument and a live performance of the artist’s memories. The Pastoral Brutalism works speak to histories of ecstatic painting, the annunciation, devotional architectures, and repetition as a form of pattern protection which is also seen in the camouflage textile designs of the Camo Coat Collection.
.spore .spore Improvisational sound performance based on sculptural score: breath, sound, gesture Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, IL 2018 Courtesy the Artist I was invited by artist Cathy Hsiao to develop an improvised sound “conversation” with her sculptures for an invitational series activating Movement I, Bloom exhibition at Goldfinch Gallery in Chicago. Top left image in the work sample represents my movement score notations with Cathy’s original sculpture score. The performance was gestural and breath-based, responding to each sculpture and her amplified wall sanding as I moved through the gallery to address each work of art as if in conversation. This is part of my ongoing investigation into materiality and the performed body.
Corpus Meum Corpus Meum Multi-platform installation including family heirloom indigo textile sound cone, speakers, room divider, glass figurine, textile, sonic activation and imprinting. The Arts Club of Chicago 2018 Courtesy the Artist Corpus Meum is a one-night-only multi-site interactive sound installation activating the galleries and its intimate spaces, an abstracted self-portrait in architectural space with each location corresponding to a part of the body: entrance as the feet grounded by Tiv drums from the artist’s place of birth in southeastern Nigeria; central gallery as the torso and gut emphasizing the power of the people based on late AFRICOBRA co-founder Barbara Jones-Hogu’s iconic Unite screen print with recordings of voices of artist community friends speaking “Unite!” playing on a group of four speakers; a tale of camping in the Nigerian bush emanating from an indigo funnel down to Wan Chuku yam mounds with chirping crickets representing the heart, the stories of youth; the saucy whispers from a corner hidden with a wooden screen as a Black feminist remix of/challenge to Vito Acconci’s 1972 Seedbed, representing the chest, breath, voice; and mournful moon jazz songs sung by the artist in recordings hidden in bathrooms, representing the head.
Holographic High Priestess, Glitch-22 2020-present Video of hologram with glitch technologies and soundscape Variable dimensions for physical and virtual exhibitions: Most recent iteration as “appearance”/”apparition” for Terrain Biennial at Blanc Gallery, Chicago, projection, exterior wall Courtesy the Artist, Hilary Higgins and C Alex Clark Exhibited for first virtual Burning Man 2020, Brand New Mesh (virtual, Veracuz, MX), Center for Afrofuturist Studies, and NFT. Experimental work addressing intersections of virtual/physical, visible/invisible. “Originally commissioned by then-NASA/Blumberg Chair of Astrobiology Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, for Becoming Interplanetary/Decolonizing Mars Symposium at U.S. Library of Congress, this multi-media audience-interactive poetic riff traverses time, space and altered dimensions. Wearing garments and a headdress inspired by depictions of Califia – the fictional BIPOC warrior queen after whom California is named--Duyst-Akpem considers what it means to be human, to reach for the stars, to become interplanetary.” Also exhibited at and at Chicago Design Museum for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow exhibition, addressing visible/invisible, liminality amidst pandemic
La Fantaisie Ibeji 2020 version Shown on loop, life-size projection Courtesy the Artist with footage from Alter-Destiny 888 at The Lab/Roger Smith Hotel and Wan Chuku at OSUMA Remixed time-based video riff on twin self, traversing virtual and physical spaces, referencing C. Micheli’s writing on twins photography in West Africa, twoness as foundation of Yoruba cosmology. Soundscape of deep space/deep sea feat. whale calls, Saturns rings, and UFO landings; speaking to cycles of fertility and abundance, darkness and transmutation. La Fantaisie Ibeji uses hypnotic imagery to represent the “twin spirit” in reference to depictions of twinning across West Africa from photography to marketplace to mosque. The Yoruba aesthetic of twoness, ejiwapo, as discussed by African art historian Babatunde Lawal, becomes inspiration for an homage to the dual self, speaking to the cycles of fertility and abundance, darkness and transformation, here remixed as still paired images as grid dreamscape.
AFRIFUTURI 02022020 Self-published Monograph The Osanyin Project: AFRIFUTURI 02022020, holographic-enhanced monograph with limited edition book box and bag: Pages featuring High Priestess of the Intergalactic Federation, Special Envoy to Mars and stills from La Fantaisie Ibeji Courtesy the Artist AFRIFUTURI 02022020 is a self-designed and -published monograph organized by the number 8, in connection with the sacred numerology of Yoruba cosmology which takes its cue from the lobes of the kola nut which presents in 2s, 4s, 8s, with 16 being the primary and 256 variations in Ifa divination. Eight works of ritual performance are highlighted, including a holographic image of the High Priestess of the Intergalactic Federation, Special Envoy to Mars, and eight writings including texts on Sculpting Space, Visible/Invisible, The Ramm Riff script, and a rural recipe. The book's writings detail my research and practice in the field of Afrofuturity over 20 years, and it imagines "AFRIFUTURI" as a new planet, a portal, a site of memory and possibility. The limited edition book box is built to house one of the softcover 8" x 8" books on a black velvet pillow with eight holographic Osanyin leaf stickers and a black-and-white cotton wrapped hand-sculpted clay kola nut anointed with cleansing oils such as rosemary. The box is housed in a gold drawstring bag made of black velvet with embroidered title and a black-and-white lining, a reference to Tiv loom-woven textile which represents the essence of my people
The Camo Coat Collection Camo Coat Collection Official Video https://vimeo.com/460999661 Jonathan Woods Multi-media project including custom textile including bulletproof, crystal, recycled leather, tartan, sound in collaboration with Sadie Woods, video with Jonathan Woods, event with book release AFRIFUTURI 02022020 Presented at Blanc Gallery in historic Bronzeville; This multifaceted project explores uses of camouflage in everyday life and within formalized ritual practice from an Afro-Futurist perspective, highlighting methodologies of conceptual, spiritual, and physical protection in pattern and textile. With Chicago-specific prints, the Camo Coat Collection considers what it means to survive and thrive in the urban landscape, addressing self-presentation, garment-based strategies to confront the consumption by the (white) gaze, invisibility and hyper-visibility, pattern as signifier, and body as vessel of liberation mobilized to effect shape-shifting transformation with garment as device in an alchemic dance of body and landscape. The Camo Coat Collection has its origins in the Osanyin Commemorative Portrait Series, 35+ portraits of NEH Fellows taken at the Emory University campus in Atlanta, Georgia in 2014, amidst each fellow’s choice of landscape location, referencing the Yoruba orisa of leave and forest wisdom who is depicted as half human, half tree. The leaf drawings and portraits led to the developing of textiles and other camouflage-influenced materials for the collection.
The Osanyin Commemorative Portrait Project Osanyin Commemorative Portrait Series, 2014 NEH Institute for Black Aesthetics and Sacred Systems, Leaders and Fellows, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, commemorating historic institute, documenting collaborative representation, site as archive Courtesy the Artist The Camo Coat Collection comprise a two-part project taking its cue from the Yoruba orisa Osanyin, god of healing, leaves, and forest wisdom, often depicted as half-tree, half-human. The first stage of the project began as The Osanyin Commemorative Portrait Series at the 2014 NEH Institute for Black Aesthetics and Sacred Systems. The portraits of NEH Fellows were taken on the Emory University campus in Atlanta, GA, commemorating the historic institute and documenting collaborative representation and site as archive. Here, I developed leaf drawings later transformed into printed textile now included in the capsule collection. This multifaceted project explores uses of camouflage in everyday life and within formalized ritual practice from an Afro-Futurist perspective, highlighting methodologies of conceptual, spiritual, and physical protection in pattern and textile. With Chicago-specific prints, The Camo Coat Collection considers what it means to survive and thrive in the urban landscape, addressing self-presentation, garment-based strategies to confront the consumption by the (white) gaze, invisibility and hyper-visibility, and pattern signifier. The body is one vessel of liberation which can be mobilized to effect shape-shifting transformation with garment as device in an alchemic dance of body and landscape.
Original Camo Coat, Lurie Garden, Millennium Park, Chicago, 2018 Original Camo Coat photographed by Hilary Higgins for Chicago Tribune article about Octavia Butler course Hilary Higgins/Chicago Tribune Portrait of the Original Camo Coat and Camo Duster with Leather Details, the coat that started it all
Wan Chuku and the Mystical Yam Farm Wan Chuku and the Mystical Yam Farm Curated by Moyo Okediji, PhD for WÁKÀTÍ:Time Shapes African Art, OSUMA, Stillwater, OK 2015-16 With edited projection of Yoruba Akire Mothers Shrine Painters overlaid with my performance Courtesy the Artist and OSUMA In Tiv, my paternal language, "wan” means child and "chuku" means little. Something or someone really small, a tiny child or baby is "chuku chuku." Tiv are also the yam farmers of Nigeria, located in the fertile farmlands of Benue State. “Wan Chuku and the Mystical Yam Farm” references the idea of being in a mystical wonderland, connecting to Amos Tutuola's book My Life in the Bush of Ghosts about a boy in colonial Nigeria who becomes lost in the mythical bush of ghosts and all of his wild adventures there. It also connects to the seed reference in Afro-Futurism, full of all possibility to build a new and healthy future. The black and white stripes for the abstract, ornamental tree forms rising from each yam mound are based on Tiv a'nger loom-woven cloth (pronounced “ahn-gair”) representing the essence of Tiv. Wan Chuku and the Mystical Yam Farm speaks also as lamentation for my father’s burned fruit tree orchards and the forced dispersal of my family. The charred piece of wood barely 2 feet x 2 feet is what’s left of our village drum, once a huge tree trunk carved and used to carry messages and to celebrate, now a violence-blackened whisper of a sound that used to transfer across verdant farmlands of Benue State.
Black Light Primal Nun ‘A’ Presents The Ramm Riff 2018 Costume for “No Guts No Galaxy” series at Red Bull Arts NY with designed props including clay kola nuts, glow-in-the-dark protea bouquet, custom “claws” refr. Ramm’s sculptures from city detritus Variable dimensions: approx. 20’ x 30’ x 14’ Courtesy Tonika Johnson “The Ramm Riff is a layered experimental composition, part manifesto, part oriki praise song/citation poetry, a call-and-response with The Rammellzee’s Garbage Gods. Led by Black Light Primal Nun “A” through hallowed virtual halls of Gothic Futurism and Afrofuturity, this audience-interactive lecture-performance weaves through space and time to illuminate histories of African-centered masquerade and mythologies; rituals of the body in clay, hair, soil; assemblage and costuming the cosmic android in the detritus of consumer culture; hauntology and becoming Spirit (in the) Machine; language and code systems as weaponized methodologies of decolonization; and the train as vessel of liberation.”
Costume and prop design for Ma(s)king Her, Honey Pot Performance collective Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago, 2016 Courtesy the Artist and Tonika Johnson Also utilized in performance activation for Fo Wilson Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities, Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WI, 2016; monograph published in 2017 by Candor Arts, Chicago Costumes for four characters as part of Ma(s)king Her, time-traveling feminist futures project with hardcover book
Burning Bridges (Gift #1): Exercise for Banishing Palpitations and Gaining Perspective; The Dream (Gift #2): Meditation Metaphor, Illustrated For Xtreme Studio, curated by Sabina Ott and Rael Salley as part of city-wide exhbitions and projects highlighting studio practice for Studio Chicago, A+D Gallery, Chicago, 2010 Courtesy the Artist and A+D Gallery I asked for a message and was given the gift of a dream. The story of The Dream (Gift #2): Meditation Metaphor, Illustrated was detailed for my guest blog at Studio Chicago. Burning Bridges (Gift #1): Exercise for Banishing Palpitations and Gaining Perspective is an attempt to reframe and re-contextualize how I see past mistakes. Making the bridge tiny, I took my power back and burned it. From the Book of Giants: To pay back the giant for trampling her fields, the witch casts a spell: “My spell will play tricks on his eyes/To make things look two times his size!" A gift of eyeglasses by a courageous little boy who spots the solution to the problem changes everything, "Birds looked no bigger than gnats/Trees looked no bigger than grass", and the boy and giant were friends forever.
Gold Nuggets For Us All Art Loop Open, curated by Mary Jane Jacob, Tricia VanEck, and Theaster Gates, Hard Rock Hotel annex, Chicago, IL, 2010 Courtesy the Artist and Tempestt Hazel Gold Nuggets for Us All has been installed as part of: -Soundscape (for Drexciya) for My Mythos exhibition, curated by Ingrid LaFleur, Fe Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, 11.11.11 -Alchemy, proposal for Chef du Jour, Taste of Chicago, 2012 -Soundscape (for Drexicya) installed for Afrofutures UK Conference curated by Florence Okoye, London, UK, 2015 -Dock 6 Design+Art 12, group exhibition at Dock 6 Collective annual invitational event; Osanyin leaf wallpaper and Gold Nuggets for Us All installation creates photo backdrop for visitors around D6 wall logo; Curated by Dan Sullivan and Edra Soto including works by Torkwase Dyson, Cathy Hsiao, LVL3, and more; music by Sadie Woods, Chicago
Alter-Destiny 888 Three-week durational performance-installation, The LAB at Roger Smith Hotel, NY, 08.08.08 Courtesy The LAB/Roger Smith Hotel A Being moves within an Afri-sci-fi environment, a living portrait of remixed iconographies. Magic- and hyper-realism explore states of longing, the desire for escape, and methodologies of freedom informed by post-colonialism and challenges in the development of new hybrid identities based on reconfigured concepts of self- and nation-hood. Musician mystic Sun Ra said, "I am the Alter-Destiny, the presence of the living myth"; music is method, fuel, pathway to other states of being and universes. The Being's songs are experimental, abstract, alien, rooted in the tones of jazz and opera, volumetric. She sings to herself, to the audience, to the alien plants, to the planet, as a repellent yet seductive guide in an environment carefully layered in symbols. Dripping West African indigo print and gold-painted columns and 3D orange swirl vortex shape a space of ritual activation. The heavy garment worn/carried by the Being has ends encrusted with clay fibroid "stones." It is a skin weighted with history, with the bodies of what might have been, psychic and cellular remnants of trauma, reflecting depths of life/sea/space, soil/oil, Black motherhood, Persephone/ psyche/legacy. Gold is ascension and abundance, infinity as represented by the title's lucky number 888, date of the exhibition’s opening. Sun Ra asks, "Are YOU ready to alter your destiny?"
Super Space Riff: An Ode to Mae Jemison & Octavia Butler Performance-Installation with soundscape for Takeover, inaugural exhibition, curated by Alison Peters Quinn, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 2006. This piece was also installed and performed as OCTO II for Looptopia, Macy's Windows with MCA, Chicago, 2007 Courtesy the Artist and Emily Evans Featured in:: -Originally commissioned as one of 40 artists responding to the new building for Hyde Park Art Center’s inaugural exhibition Takeover, 2006 -Invited for Looptopia performance-installation in historic Macy’s windows on State Street, Chicago -Video performance at Hollywood Beach, Chicago “Super Space Riff: An Ode to Mae Jemison and Octavia Butler in VIII Stanzas” (excerpt): I. Code: 229435000721 Intergalactic Transmission Translation Date: 2006AD/50th year Mae Jemison From: Afri-Sci-FiAnthromorph Planet Address: /||+)||\ |. (or, A3) You Are Here…
Rapunzel Revisited: AnAfri-Sci-Fi Space Sea Siren Tale Rapunzel Revisited: AnAfri-Sci-Fi Space Sea Siren Tale 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work, Solo exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL 2006 Including projection and soundscape with interactive seating and performance Courtesy MCA Chicago and Matt Woods From curator’s text: Rapunzel Revisited is "a surreal environment where 'afri-futurism', the aquatic world, and fairy tales meet, while also subversively flirting with representations of Black femininity, seduction, and repulsion and what constitutes a damsel-in-distress." Text from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is scripted onto the dark walls, the tale of Baucis and its inhabitants who live on stilts, peering at the world below from spyglasses. This separation—for protection, perhaps out of fear, perhaps something wondrous up there in the clouds—between earth and the figure is key; the installation deals in contradictions, welcoming and yet fairly treacherous as jellyfish are beautiful but may harm if you become entangled in their tentacles. There is the push-me-pull-you of navigating life as a Black woman. The pedestal keeps you safe but separate, as the figure peers down at the world below.
Kasevikundu's Hut Kasevikundu's Hut Mutatis Mutandis, Dillard University Art Gallery, New Orleans, LA Home/Works, Betty Rymer Gallery, Chicago, IL 2003 Courtesy the Artist Kasevikundu’s Hut is a near life-size print of a photograph from inside my Grandmother Kasevikundu’s home in Shangev Tiev, Benue State, Nigeria, the Akpem family’s ancestral home. This hut was one of a number in her compound on the family farm. There was something mesmerizing about the brilliant equatorial light quality in contrast to the cool interior darkness within, captured through the small door portal. At Dillard University for Mutatis Mutandis (those things which must be changed/having been changed), I installed the print with a light centered in back to illuminate the center of the print and created a circle of packed soil a slightly scaled-down circumference of Kasevikundu’s actual hut. This work brings me close to home every time I see it. A kind of synesthesia is activated in memory of walking barefoot on a circle of soil with the installation reminiscent of a hut’s interior and also an earthen rug. At the same time, there is nostalgia for that which no longer exists. Most of my family has been displaced from this area due to neighboring attacks. My father’s lovingly cultivated orchards have been burned multiple times. To lose trees which take so long to grow is a particular kind of devastation. The work now functions as portal on many levels.
Weight of Words: Wearing, Washing Private ritual performance, 2M Space, SAIC, Chicago, 2003; Also exhibited as part of Self-Revolution exhibition, Unit B Gallery, San Antonio, TX, 2009 Courtesy the Artist Can memory contained in body cells be altered like cells in HTML coding? The costume for the private performance Weight of Words: Wearing, Washing began as a wall collage for Mutatis Mutandis (those things which must be changed/having been changed), charting a visual map of a psycho-emotional process that becomes the skin of the hybrid initiation creature, later removed to reveal names etched in paint on the skin, washed and released.
Dragonflygirl Interactive animation, Black Harvest Film Festival Exhibition, Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, 2002 Courtesy the Artist One of my earliest explorations into interactivity within virtual space, project on the heels of working with Barbara DeGenevieve and the Porn Shot Collective after funding my move to Chicago three years earlier by publishing and selling a book of erotica. Dragonflygirl represents an early interest in nature-based otherworldly beings that I have since developed into larger performance-installations and a focus on intersections of Afro-Futurism and ecology. For the animated version, flowers move and spin toward the viewer in a loop, and the cursor is a hand symbol (rather than an arrow) so that the viewer can stroke the floating figure. When she is stroked, her two heads laugh deeply and maniacally, the sound layering and repeating on top of itself until slowly fading.
Sculpting Sound Sculpting Sound Sculpted 200-year old recycled pine, gold leaf, polycarbonate, acrylic, light, lighting gels; 8' x 2' x 10" Chicago, IL 2001 Courtesy the Artist and Stacy Goldate “Don’t Let Your Life Pass You By” is the phrase and theme that served as foundation for this commission for a tech and real estate investor. I proposed this concept to highlight a perfect nook in the dining area of his penthouse overlooking the south-west lake (with south and west views) just across from Navy Pier in Chicago. The client picked a phrase of deep importance to him and recorded it until he/we selected the exact soundwave pattern most pleasing to the eye. Every single piece of this work has significance to the client. 200-year-old reclaimed pine that had been baked in a roof over the years to a near-crystalline amber, was hand- and machine-carved into 65 “quills” representing the client’s year of birth. Each quill was gold-leaf tipped to reflect the family company which he turned into a million-dollar enterprise. A slightly frosted polycarbonate sheeting was chosen for its durability, illuminated at night by a strip of lighting with gel colors specifically chosen by client to reflect his favorite color of Lake Michigan. With custom metal hardware measuring 8’ x 2’ x 10”, this sculpture was designed and installed to reflect in the window as if it was floating right on the southeast horizon.