Cosas Simples

Still life has traditionally been a way of pausing to look at objects, taking them out of context and giving them a presence that often goes unnoticed in everyday life. In Simple Things, I return to that practice of looking, bringing in objects that belong both to our material world and to the worlds imagined by film, science fiction and popular culture.

Among everyday objects are artifacts that once held out the promise of a possible future: the hoverboard from Back to the Future, accessories, toys and other things from fictional worlds. Though they may never have existed as we imagined them, they form part of our visual memory. We know them, recognize them and even remember them as though they had been part of our own lives.

I am interested in how popular culture shapes those imagined worlds. Science fiction anticipates technologies and invents worlds, while also offering ways to inhabit the future, to relate to objects and to imagine what does not yet exist. In time, some of those images take material form, while others remain as traces of futures that never arrived.

In watercolor, these objects take on a different existence. Industrial reproduction, cinematic imagery and digital artifice pass through a slow, meticulous process done by hand. Attention to surfaces, materials and small details gives the objects a physical presence that contrasts with their imaginary origins.

Where the everyday meets fiction, still life becomes a way of looking at the futures we have imagined as well as a representation of the things around us.