Filter Feeder
Filter Feeder was a solo exhibition at DePauw University, Greenscastle, IN, in 2023. Below are installation images and a statement about the work. The work grows from my Studiolo project, where further information about individual artworks in the exhibition can be found.
You can read a review of my October 5, 2023 artist talk about the exhibition by clicking here.
Installation images are courtesy Eric Lubrick.
While many varieties exist, some filter feeders are immobile ocean organisms that filter particles of food from the currents that move through and around them (the artist's favorites are sea fans). Instead of having the agency to actively seek sources of food, they must wait for it to be brought to them.
Human experience of images is similar to how these organisms obtain sustenance. We do not ask to be immersed in images, and yet they are constantly washing through and over us. And those images, in turn, become a part of what we understand and believe.
However, it seems that with increasing frequency we see things that exist outside of the structural framework we have constructed to understand our experiences. Whether publicly shared or in private, these are the moments that make us tell others that what we saw "felt like a movie." Disassociated from what feels real, these outliers make us reevaluate our understanding of a sane and rational world—coming through like a hurricane, tearing down the structures of understanding that we've built to make sense of the senseless.
This exhibition of drawings and paper sculptures is a self portrait of the artist as a poetic representation of knowledge and belief—and questions how those rickety structures will hold up to moments that threaten to shake us to the core.