Installation view
Mixed Media Sculpture View from outside the gallery, showing the map of suburban Las Vegas created with cast Jell-O houses. Off the Map, Exhibition at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
Mixed Media Sculpture View from inside the gallery. Off the Map, Exhibition at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
Mixed Media Sculpture Close-up view of the Jell-O houses installed on the inside of the gallery window. Off the Map, Exhibition at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
Mixed Media Sculpture View of the installation in progress, showing the satellite maps the volunteers and I used to locate the suburban streets and place the houses. Off the Map, Exhibition at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
Mixed Media Sculpture A viewer looks in from the outside at some of the houses which have begun to shrink from age. Off the Map, Exhibition at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
Mixed Media Sculpture and Video Video still from the 2 minute video also on-view in the gallery. Off the Map, Exhibition at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
Mixed Media Sculpture and Video Viewers watching the video also installed in the gallery. Off the Map, Exhibition at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
Suburban Development, Las Vegas in Jell-O
I created a video and a site-specific sculpture mapping suburban neighborhoods of Las Vegas for Off the Map at the Kirkland Art Center in Kirkland, WA. The small suburban houses, made of gelatin (in different stages of dehydration), were installed directly onto the inside surface of the large gallery windows. During this exhibition, viewers from both outside and within the gallery could observe the streets of illuminated houses as they continued to shrink and decay.
I also played footage during the exhibition, which showed the desert near Las Vegas being overtaken by hundreds of tiny houses, which shrivel up and are replaced by new, bigger houses, pushing the old structures aside. I took advantage of the fugitive nature of gelatin to comment on the nature of suburban growth and the housing economy in Las Vegas.