3:43 excerpt

Object Lessons, 2009 video installation

exhibited in 86 Everybody!, Room Gallery, Univeristy of California, Irvine, 4/23-5/9/09

I recuperated the waste materials from Daniel J. Martinez's 2008 California Biennial installation of Call Me Ishmael at the Orange County Museum of Art. Martinez was my teacher at UC Irvinve and the chair of my thesis committee. The piece was a hydraulically powered robot of Martinez's likeness that had an epileptic seizure. The installation of the piece was elaborate and required a floor structure to be built in the gallery in order to conceal the hydraulics. These materials included several dozen sheets of inch thick formica, a stack of 2"x10"x16' floor struts, and a number of concrete blocks. The cost of these materials was approximately $10,000 and slated for the dumpster at the end of the show.

I contacted Habitat for Humanity and was informed that they could put these materials to reuse. I scavenged the materials as they were discarded and transported them to a classroom at UCI. I reconstructed the museum installation, made a puppet from the packing trash of the robot, and shot this video.