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 Wood Veneer Cutouts
These pieces are hand-cut from thin sheets of wood veneer - a material that is rich in associations as well as contradictions. Like the industrial sponges I saturate with paint, wood veneer embodies the contradiction of being an object without mass. Unlike the sponge, which is a skinless and porous skeleton of void space, the wood veneer is an object so compacted and compressed that it is only a skin. Although the pieces have the rich substantial surface of solid wood, they are, in fact, so outlandishly flat that they challenge the very definition of "object".
Using a penknife to cut intricate patterns of vintage lace doilies into the veneer, these pieces are also strongly related to my painted and layered Mylar cutouts, but with a very different focus. In these veneer pieces I am interested in exploring the nature of wood as a material - and in particular, the dynamic transformation created between material and image. It is the lace image that transforms the wood by revealing both fragility and strength - the true nature of wood, and of trees themselves. The lace doily is likewise transformed into something organic, substantial and significant - more like a giant skeletal leaf than a domestic accessory. In these pieces, both the furniture and its innocuously decorative doilies have morphed together into one large, absurdly delicate object, compressing and distorting both image and material. Humorous, contradictory, and quietly subversive, the doily has gone wild and the wood has been fully domesticated.
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