Anthropocene at METHOD

This Friday (3/18/22), my installation at METHOD Gallery in Seattle opens. If you go, you’ll see paper clothing and a wall-mounted miniature tableau. Because art exhibits are often more interesting with a bit of context, I offer this artist statement in advance. I hope to see you there!

The Anthropocene is an unofficial geological epoch defined by the profound and visible impact of human activity on planet Earth. The epoch began, some say, in the 1800s in the Industrial Revolution in the United States and Europe when industry and mechanization fueled by capitalism started altering Earth’s atmosphere with climate-changing emissions, such as methane and carbon. 

This installation looks back to the Industrial Revolution and the ordinary people who, often unwittingly, launched and participated in practices that created the environmental catastrophes we see today, from historic floods and wildfires to deforestation and extinction events. What has changed since then? How different are they from us? What did they know and when did they know it?

The paper clothes were sewn on an antique sewing machine in kraft paper from a paper mill in Washington State and in apparel designs worn by ordinary people. Many quotes typewritten on the garments are from conservation textbooks from the 1960s, and the calligraphy alludes to promises made and promises broken. 

The wall-mounted miniature tableaus are created from trash, mostly plastics from packaging and electronics. The miniatures are not only an imagined skyline but represent the geological stratum of the Anthropocene preserved forever in the rock layers of our planet.  The tableaus are finished in graphite, a crystalized form of carbon, alluding to one measure of our impact on Earth’s atmosphere: the carbon footprint.