Metamorphic Dis-chords
2019 Art Installation with 50% of the metal recycled from the 2017 Sonoma Fire

The transformation culminating in one experience is often the result of many. The modern life we enjoy arrived at great cost. Industrialization required disrupting earth that rested in wait for thousands of millennia.
We broke and drilled the surface, crushed and sifted, burned sludge, smelted and reformed. We cut living trees and ground them into shapes to serve our needs. Long before all that, stars exploded and meteors collided to create earth itself.
Humans settled into their exploitative, rote civilizations, periodically arrested in shock and awe when natural disasters repossessed nature’s materials. We’re not in control, never have been, never will be. We adapt to transitions through transitions of our own. This project reminds through the haze of two events, past and present.
In 2017, a devastating fire changed the lives of thousands of people in Sonoma, CA. With this fire event, nature took back everything, reducing human constructs to the elemental components of charred ash and metal. Order to disorder.
Shocked by landfill-consigned losses, humans find solace in re-purposing the remnants. Disorder to Order.
Material transformation abounds, structural elements reformatted; inspiring contemplation, yet speaking of devastation, abandonment and artistic possibilities in the wake of crippling losses.
A mass of many artistic projects, with distorted metal materials salvaged from fire-ravaged properties, this is not one single artistic element, but many. HALF of the metal materials used in this project were salvaged from fire-ravaged properties.
From their valueless wasteland, donors smirked reprise in learning of the plan: an alternate reality where groaning scraps of morphed instrumentation could express their narratives. Kinetic and interactive fabrications combine to play nature’s random songs. We don’t assume harmony here; we anticipate discordance. The question is: can harmony emerge via human interaction on the playa?