This is the first installation that I have done! I am very excited and have learned a lot regarding the process of making an installation. One important thing that I learned is that it’s always best doing it with a bunch of people. This piece took about 5, 12 – 18 hour days. I was invited by Jeremy Ehly, the curator of the “Show Pods” down at the Chicago Arts District in Pilsen, to make an installation using a ream of white paper. The show is call the “ReamScape”, still on display at 1839 S. Halsted (located right next to CAD).
The initial idea is to create 500 asterisks with a cylinder/ paper tube of varying length. Those units are laid out in a grid and some paper tube are filled with red paper, forming a bigger asterisk. These tubes with red tips were to mimic my matches burn series. On the computer, the red big asterisk is prominent because of the scale I was looking at it. Therefore, I named my installation: “asterisk: utilized performance enhancing drug”, making reference to the latest use of the asterisk symbol in baseball, to indicate a player’s use of steroid. The big red asterisk is bulging because of the varying length of the tubes. However, after I have installed it, I was surprised to see that it’s actually the totality of the white asterisk units that is more prominent and looks like lace work. And the red tips just seem to float, thus I renamed it to “Grandma’s Lace on Acid”.
