Stalagmites
We must all live with the inescapable toxicity of our daily actions, like citizens of Calvino’s “Invisible” Leonia whose reckless, short-sighted decisions lead to disaster, “submerging the city in its own past.” The dust settles, our last breath crystallizes somewhere within the record of Anthropocene strata, and we emerge from the hardened mineral edges as a stone cold reflection of our delusional hopes and dreams, a Pompeiian hand-mirror in our pocket.
Using an updated, contaminated version of the ancient lost-wax process, I layered petroleum-based materials such as styrofoam, polystyrene insulation, single-use plastics and disposable packaging along with textiles, scrap wood, food waste and garbage. These conglomerate forms were then incinerated and cast into solid aluminum, forever petrified into stratified evidence of daily accumulation.
Stalagmites, cast aluminum.
