This series is an exploration of the tensions, balances and rituals around parting from, and returning to one's every-day life and partner. The installation juxtaposes the materials of travel with those of home. I created sculptural forms by combining tire rubber with used napkins, dish towels, and slept-in bed sheets to explore this dance peculiar to the couple in which one partner travels a lot, and the other stays home. Marine hardware references the fishing and marine research communities in Maine where this piece was made. These occupations cause prolonged absences and separation.
Buoys serve as indicators of where to find important things one has left behind, places one returns to. I surround them with rubber stitched to cloth, and attach talismen, symbolic of the habitual, ritualistic parting of ways. We leave home carrying memories, feelings, intentions. Sometimes we lose them en route.
Rubber Hits the Road, 2011, used bed sheets, rubber tires and inner tubes, marine hardware, metal, paint, fiber
