Home Dialects
- Date: 2001
- Location: installation at Open Space
Home Dialects is an ongoing series of sculptures and installations that encompass several concepts – specifically, the ideas of parenthood and home, the creation of an artistic vernacular based on written and verbal language and games, and the definition of lived-in spaces. Some artifacts are personally significant while others are appropriated and act as a foundation upon which this project is built. “Finnegan’s Wake” is the disassembling and rearrangement of a book that lived unread in my home. It became a quilt-like screen in front of which sat a child’s chair, supporting a baby-monitor that broadcast Joyce’s reading of his own work. A screen-saver filled a computer monitor with young voices, permeating the gallery with their delight at the bath time ritual. Alphabet bath toys -- complete with teeth marks -- floated on a wall.
Home artifacts, which have been filtered through a formal working process, provide the building blocks upon which this series rests as a whole, implying a narrative through traditionally non-narrative forms.