Residual Home

This work was the manifestation of my own haunting. The image on the inside of the shack is a black and white video of myself feeling the walls and rocking. This work was part of my MA show, it doesn’t have to be this way but mostly it is. This show was about the process of finding oneself though and after a personal trauma.

6P° 21′ DQ2″ 

Casted ceramic, cement, foam paper, cable, hardware, wood. Photo Credit: Jim Escalante

futher on / part 2: The Wayfarer

screen shot of Serena in the Ice Caves. duration (@ 10 minutes). further on, features an imagined future. further on’s theme is the resilience of the main character and her connection to the Earth. The narrative asserts that the depletion of natural resources has imbalanced the Earth’s environment coupled with pollution from the residuals of on-going warfare. The Earth’s has become uninhabitable and the remaining people retreat into Sanctuaries. The project will include five color films imbedded in an installation. The Translator is the first film. Each of the films features one main character Serena. Serena is the sonic translator for the Living Archive at the Sanctuary, which contains plant specimens. When she senses vibrations from the plants she sees images, allowing her to understand the plants. In The Translator, plant shipments are being sent anonymously to Serena from outside her Sanctuary’s parameter. These particular plants start sending her images that the Earth is no longer polluted and has rejuvenated itself. They want her to go outside the Sanctuary. The Administration does not want Serena to investigate these findings, instead they want the new plants immediately incinerated. Serena must decide to listen to the plants or the Administration. In The Wayfarer, Serena attempts to convince the Sanctuary’s Administration that the Earth has been triumphantly resilient. Their conversation quickly becomes a personal attack on Serena. Serena suspects there are hidden motives at play. She must escape the Sanctuary and take refuge elsewhere.

What you cannot see happening inside

28″ x 30″ x 4″ Screen printed Plexi glass, mirror, and hanging hardware This image was created site specific for a class show (Pattern in Environment) at Life Technologies-Thermo Fisher Scientific, a stem cell research facility. I wanted to keep with my theme of changes in the brain and Life Technologies does stem cell research with Parkinson’s disease cells. I started with an image of a Parkinson’s disease brain cell and reworked the image in Photoshop. I created a second layer outline so that I could create a two-color print. I printed on plexi and offset the image with spacers. A mirror was place behind the 2 printed plexi panels so the viewer catches glimpses of himself or herself as they view the work. Much like Alzheimer’s and Dementia there is no way to know if you may get the disease, no way to prevent and no cure. Approximately 60,000 people a year in the USA are diagnosed with Parkinson’s. I wanted the viewer to ponder the idea of the unknown of the future.

100 Attempts (Expounding Absence)

cut Tyvek, nails, and light Approximately 4′ x 18′ overall This piece is an installation of 100 pieces of paper, each with a different translation of a block of text cut out of it (approximately 35 languages are included overall). The text is excerpted from Judges 14:14 and one of the English translations reads, “Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet. And after three days they still could not explain the riddle.” This piece investigates not only the typical understanding of translation as it relates to languages, but also explores the process of translation as moving something from one form to a different physical form, material, or location and the results of that type of translation. This piece also deals with themes relating to consumption, vacancy or absence of meaning, and the use of text as a tool to create visual pattern or decoration.

The British Butler and the Prostitute

Collected Lamp and Chandelier Parts Personification synesthesia is when an individual subconsciously imbues a personality to inanimate objects, a phenomena I have experienced all my life. The style, finish, vintage condition and weight of the chandelier arms and body parts all contribute to their classification as a literary or cinematic archetype. Personalities range from the red neck cousin to the state senator and from the British butler to the prostitute. The physical act of ‘screwing’ these pieces together becomes quite sexual with technical terms like male/female parts, nuts and nipples, which is humorous, naughty and ethically challenging. All lamp parts have a universal connection system, a standard threading for mechanical connections. These pieces that aesthetically should not be connected were designed to be interchangeable and fit together.

Rise over Run

Katie Elizabeth Apsey performs in Rise over Run, a site-specific dance work choreographed by Li Chiao-Ping. While completing a reading independent study with Laurie Beth Clark on the subject of performance studies in preparation for her PhD preliminary comprehensive exams in art history, Apsey was able to apply her theoretical explorations to her practice as a dancer. Choreographed on-site at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, Rise over Run uses movement to examine how architectural space and framing of various places influences the performances of identity, the directions of academic/scientific research, and the behavior embodied in these spaces/places. Dancing for the Li Chiao-Ping Dance Company gave Apsey a practical way to think through her dissertation research on the performance of minoritarian identity within museum spaces.

Ganda 1514

Bass Wood, Plywood, paint, rice 72″ x 21″ x 43″ This work is one possible rendering of Ganda, the living rhinoceros that was the Lisbon Rhinoceros of Durer’s famous print. Posed in his last breath on the sinking ship and yet not fully rendered. He is gold like an idol with a horn resembling a tool. He is a beast of burden, the burden of description or the anchor of the ship. The work gestures to a false or undefined idol, Durer never saw this animal with his own eyes and yetmade the print that forever defined it. His body is a hollow shape with apertures on either end that the viewer can look through. It is both a body and a monument that is neither erected nor fallen. The bags of rice that the body sits on are employed as ballast. The banal elements of empirical trade routes fueled by the spice trade and the quest for land, this imported element grounds the piece both literally and metaphorically.

(m)eat

(m)eat is an ongoing project that utilizes the production and service of designed bologna as a basis for interaction. This images shows the performance of this project that occurred in the 7th Floor Gallery in Madison, WI on March 29, 2014 with Jeannine Shinoda slicing meat and serving open faced sandwiches to the public.