“I made you. I loved you. I destroyed you.”, the title of our most recent body of work, explains our process, step-by-step: we create hand-built, life-sized human sculptures out of waxes, Vaseline, Crisco, butter, condensed milk, oils and other heat-reactive materials. We care for them deeply, we carve their faces and shape their bodies, we give them crow’s feet, a toothy grin and dimpled thighs, clenched fists and strong arms, a feminine belly and a proud chest. We give them names, homes, stories and histories, documenting their existence in photographed narrative vignettes. We place the sculptures alongside human counterparts, sculpted limbs and human limbs intertwining. The fictional elements get confused in the seemingly objective, unaltered photograph. Then we destroy the sculptures. We subject them to intense, prolonged heat and the realistic human forms melt into color and abstraction. In the end, all that remains is documentation, photos and video to prove that it all once existed.
What is a sculpture exhibition without sculpture? What does it mean to remember a three-dimensional object you can touch and move, a person you can talk to and laugh with, a relationship you can feel deeply and love dearly? What does it mean to document something or someone whose very essence is the time and the space it occupies? Our work deals with notions of love, loss, the performative nature of identity, the preservation of memory vs. the fictionalization of past, the violence involved with letting go and the grace and redemption involved with moving on.
Our work involves violence. We use blowtorches, crowbars, and icepicks to undo our sculptures. Over the course of just a few hours, the Vaseline and wax sculptures melt and transform. Nails and glass shards pierce the surface of the skin and shoot out from the inside of a human chest, then a field of flowers falls into a pile of charred twigs, then to dust. Though the process of creating the imagery is brutal, when it is filmed and played in reverse, it tells a story of redemption. From the mess of bubbling oil, burning twigs, ropes, and nails, a lifelike human emerges. It is essential to the spirit of our work that these things, these life experiences that rip us apart and break our hearts, are, in the end, exactly what make us whole and human.
As sculptors and object-makers, we are steadily working towards the mastery of skills we know will take a lifetime to achieve. Each sculpture takes many months to complete. While one is taking shape, we subject another to the blowtorch and burners, using heat to accelerate its inevitable decay. To constantly destroy our creations is a meditation on letting go and a reminder of the impermanence of physical objects. This studio practice mirrors the conceptual threads that run through our work. We are currently continuing this study of decay within the context of the human body, expanding our material palettes and destruction processes beyond melting to include explosion, rot, water damage, mold growth, and erosion. Through this work, we hope to convey a love and respect for human characters in all their complexities and imperfections, a hopefulness that beauty will emerge from a landscape of destruction, a belief that ends are beginnings and that moments of brokenness are opportunities to rebuild.
What is a sculpture exhibition without sculpture? What does it mean to remember a three-dimensional object you can touch and move, a person you can talk to and laugh with, a relationship you can feel deeply and love dearly? What does it mean to document something or someone whose very essence is the time and the space it occupies? Our work deals with notions of love, loss, the performative nature of identity, the preservation of memory vs. the fictionalization of past, the violence involved with letting go and the grace and redemption involved with moving on.
Our work involves violence. We use blowtorches, crowbars, and icepicks to undo our sculptures. Over the course of just a few hours, the Vaseline and wax sculptures melt and transform. Nails and glass shards pierce the surface of the skin and shoot out from the inside of a human chest, then a field of flowers falls into a pile of charred twigs, then to dust. Though the process of creating the imagery is brutal, when it is filmed and played in reverse, it tells a story of redemption. From the mess of bubbling oil, burning twigs, ropes, and nails, a lifelike human emerges. It is essential to the spirit of our work that these things, these life experiences that rip us apart and break our hearts, are, in the end, exactly what make us whole and human.
As sculptors and object-makers, we are steadily working towards the mastery of skills we know will take a lifetime to achieve. Each sculpture takes many months to complete. While one is taking shape, we subject another to the blowtorch and burners, using heat to accelerate its inevitable decay. To constantly destroy our creations is a meditation on letting go and a reminder of the impermanence of physical objects. This studio practice mirrors the conceptual threads that run through our work. We are currently continuing this study of decay within the context of the human body, expanding our material palettes and destruction processes beyond melting to include explosion, rot, water damage, mold growth, and erosion. Through this work, we hope to convey a love and respect for human characters in all their complexities and imperfections, a hopefulness that beauty will emerge from a landscape of destruction, a belief that ends are beginnings and that moments of brokenness are opportunities to rebuild.
