Each 'blobject' is made using vitreous enamel on copper. The pieces are joined using only enamel, with no solder or weld joints.

blob

1. Something blunt and round; a small drop or lump of something viscid or thick; a drop; a bubble; a blister. 

This body of work was created at the Kohler factory in 2006 during a residency in the Arts/Industry program at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Before going to Kohler, I found out that the Kohler Company owns a “5 diamond” resort directly across the street from the factory. It got me thinking about the diamond as a symbol of quality, power, wealth, & greed. 

Thanks to movies like Blood Diamond, & hip-hop artists like Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, & Nas, we have culturally become more aware of the problems & complexities within the diamond industry. As a fan of hip-hop music, I especially love how hip-hop culture has influenced mainstream America. The pimp cup is a status symbol within hip-hop culture. What is interesting to me is that most often these cups are made of chintzy materials but give the illusion of value & wealth. Rhinestones are simply glued onto glass or metal plated plastic cups. Essentially they are a form of urban folk art.

Carbonado

18” x 16” x 12”

56,699 karats

cast iron, vitreous enamel

OR chrome plated brass

2006

rind

/rīnd/

1. the tough outer layer of something, in particular.

Inspired by pimp cups, these pieces of americana are encrusted with vintage Swarovski crystals.

MINE Luxury Nail Lacquer is handmade using the finest raw minerals on earth. Each exclusive color is richly pigmented with precious metals and minerals with no additional fillers or colorants. The 5-free lacquers are hand-mixed and poured into a hand-crafted Austrian crystal bottle. Finished with a custom brush, application requires only one coat. MINE is the pinnacle of luxury – a benchmark of quality, style and perfection.

The marriage of my technical skill in metallurgy and innovation in conceptual design has resulted in this truly artful alchemy which is MINE. I have created a hand formulated, luxuriant, and unparalleled product melding nail polish with fine art.

Each component of our Corporate Identity, the logo, typeface, packaging and supplemental imagery, was carefully crafted to reflect our overall brand message. The logo itself consists of pickaxes and a shovel with an inner medallion containing intersecting letters M & A, which mimic a mountain range and reflect the brand's parent company Mina Atramentum, which means 'Ink Mine' in Latin. The custom MINE typeface is specifically constructed utilizing the angles and sharp edges found in a faceted gemstone for the serif.

The bottle design is based on a cubic crystalline structure found in naturally forming minerals, enforcing the brand’s overall goal of bringing pure luxurious minerals to the user. The overall packaging was designed to mimic the unearthing of minerals. In unwrapping the paper and opening the black box, the customer is “mining” for the precious material inside. The initial line we launched includes lacquers exclusively pigmented with 24K & 22K gold, fine silver, pewter, aluminum, graphite, or a blend of graphite and 24K gold.

Unearth the most elegant collection of luxury nail lacquer ever created, made for those with the most discriminating standards and taste.

I conceived of MINE in Philadelphia, and when I decided it was time for me to jump ship on city living, and my career in academia, the natural choice for me was the Hudson Valley. As I say, a shitty day in High Falls is better than the best day in Philadelphia. I currently reside in, and produce MINE in my studio in Kingston, which allows me to keep one foot in the door in NYC, the fashion hub and machine that helps keep MINE alive. The community here in the Hudson valley is what gets me out of bed everyday and I’m thrilled to be included in an event such as this to connect with people who strive to help this enclave prosper and grow.

BLOB- binary large object

<database> (BLOB) A large block of data stored in a database, such as an image or sound file. A BLOB has no structure which can be interpreted by the database management system but is known only by its size and location.

These BLOB installations are visual representations of sounds recorded in the studio while making the pieces. The recorded sounds are fed into a sound mapping program & the pattern is created.

The Eyes of Modernism: Cleveland Enamellists

Ohio is an ideal site for this installation as it is part of the “Enamel Belt” of the U.S. It is home to industrial enamel manufacturers, such as the Ferro Corporation, and has a rich history tied to enamellists in academia at Kent State University and the Cleveland Institute of Art.  In a recent article in Metalsmith magazine, Cleveland was called “the most important center for enameling it the United States. ”

The Cleveland Institute of Art is the only institution that offers enameling as a major, separate and apart from the jewelry/ metals program.

This work directly addresses the historical significance of Cleveland as a center for enamellists of the 20th & 21st centuries I have begun to catalogue the history of mid-20th century enamellists through photographs of the artists; specifically their eyes.

The eyes in exhibition belong to:

Kenneth Bates

Jimmy Champion

William Harper

Mary Ellen McDermott

John Paul Miller

Jean O’Hara

Anthony Vaiksnoras

Edward Winter

Thelma Fraiser Winter

The pattern on the wall is a physical representation of the sound of sifting enamel. I record myself while working in my studio and then feed the sounds into a computer program called Sonogram. Sonogram is a sound visualization program that was originally developed for speech recognition. This software analyzes the sounds and creates a series of visual depictions of what the sound looks like. I then take one of those depictions to determine the placement of the elements on the wall.

These pieces are made of cast iron bathtub fragments, which did not meet the A-1 standard of quality at the Kohler factory. I cut up the tubs and used the fragments to create large-scale ‘fusion flow’ tests.  Fusion flow refers to the viscosity of the enamel when it is at its flow point. This fusion flow point is the key element to using enamel as an adhesive. (see Blobjects and stars for examples)

The Flow of the Factory: The Boys of Enamel

16” x 12” x 3”

cast iron bathtub, vitreous enamel

2006

Family lore states that I'm a descendant of Betsy Ross, so I'm constantly trying to update the American flag.

Both diamonds and graphite are solely made of the same element; carbon. Diamonds are the hardest substance known to man and graphite is one of the softest. The only difference between the two are the way in which the atoms are joined. These drawings depict the atomic structure of diamonds & carbon. They are scribed into a sheet of solid graphite and dusted with 24k gold powder.