Observed
People recognized company names before they recognized the artwork.
Some visitors searched for familiar streets.
The closer people stood, the smaller the objects became.
Old receipts became landscapes.
A typewriter key became a contour line.
The works now live where thousands of people pass through without knowing where the materials once came from.
Field Notes
Places disappear slowly.
Some buildings continue existing long after they're abandoned.
I carried these fragments for years before I knew what they belonged to.
Collecting became a way of remembering places I couldn't return to.
History survives in ordinary things.
Sometimes the artwork begins decades before it's made.
August, 2022
Stratum of Localization
2022
Found industrial objects, steel, wood
60 × 120 × 12 in
Permanent commission
Cambria Hotel
New Haven, Connecticut
Company From Bigelow
2022
Found paper artifacts, collage
36 × 32 × 2 in
Permanent commission
Cambria Hotel
New Haven, Connecticut
Stratum of Localization and Company From Bigelow are companion works created for the Cambria Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut. Together, they assemble fragments of the city's industrial history through objects and documents collected over many years. One work forms an aerial interpretation of the New Haven Green using locally manufactured artifacts including clock parts, keys, typewriter components, and tools. The other brings together paper ephemera recovered from former factories and industrial buildings—receipts, work orders, telegraphs, and handwritten records—preserving traces of everyday labor and communication. Installed together, the works create a layered portrait of place assembled through accumulation rather than illustration.
