Installations
A chronological survey of site-specific work from the past two decades (newest to oldest)
hoarder’s prayer | 2022
palate (a cautionary head) | 2021
fish trap | 2018
![For inclusion in a group show, I reformatted one section of Funnel Tunnel [see images farther down in Installations section] that didn’t get used when the original sculpture moved from Montrose Blvd in Houston to Poydras Corridor in New Orleans. St…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5eb25afd130a7a67ee3cc1b0/1594951314750-PWAD96GWBZN4ISRHFBCD/IMG_4132.jpg)
For inclusion in a group show, I reformatted one section of Funnel Tunnel [see images farther down in Installations section] that didn’t get used when the original sculpture moved from Montrose Blvd in Houston to Poydras Corridor in New Orleans. Stood on end, contrasting its previous horizontal orientation, the steel piece functions as a framework for displaying the colored wood pieces. These ‘weird fishes’ were made applying the chunklets ideology [see Evolution Painted Wood section] of using random plywood scraps as a substrate, in this case for herringbone-patterned strips of upcycled wood (also from the Montrose Funnel Tunnel install).
The title fish trap is excerpted from a Modest Mouse lyric; the ‘weird fishes’ appellation is borrowed from a Radiohead song title.
This ring was temporarily installed in one of the chambers of Houston’s historic Mahatma rice silo. Suspended from hundreds of individual strands of colored thread from my grandmother’s sewing supplies, which came to me after she passed away, it honors the cycle of life and our loved ones who have gone before.
apparition | 2017
vanilla extract | 2016
silo | 2016
An exploration of various themes:
architecture in relationship to the human body
imbedded information in architectural material + the spirit of the building
buildings and the mind as repositories for memory
clothing as plastic architecture
clothing and architecture as identifiers for what is contained within
layers of the body vs. layers of the earth
human time vs. geological time
Found painted wood, found window, pink fiberglass insulation, found objects, crowd-sourced clothing, reconfigured elements (steel framework, forked stick) from hot droop installation [see images below].
harbinger | 2016
silver lining | 2015
sentinel | 2015
Philosophical inquiry on the nature of authority and security. Who protects us from those who protect us?
Temporary installation outside City Hall, downtown Houston.
concrete jungle | 2015
Reconfigured steel pallet rack, found aluminum fence posts with incidental concrete castings, concrete chunks with steel stick-outs (from original Funnel Tunnel footings), carpet padding
sunraider | 2014
I made this installation during my tenure as a high school art teacher, and I think the repetition of teaching color theory sparked this interpretation of how white light refracts into a spectrum. The window of this space became my muse and the stand-in for a prism such as one would use in an optical experiment.
The shape of the window was deconstructed and segmented into the individual ROYGBIV panels, each composed from found objects in their respective color range.
The indigo arm was chopped off, both to cheat the problem I had of gathering a varied selection of indigo objects, and as a way to allow unimpeded ingress/egress. In retrospect I should’ve painted the inside of the door indigo…maybe I was denied permission to do that, memory doesn’t serve…
hot droop | 2014
The design for this piece began with a funny idea: what if a giant could pull a building surface like taffy? This notion of plastic architecture culminated in a piece that pays homage to one of my first major art influences, Dalí, as well as a more personal connection…the colorful forked stick holding up the sculpture previously sat outside of my mentor Lee Littlefield’s studio, and he would wipe off his paintbrushes on its surface after painting one of his technicolor pieces. When I worked for Lee in high school, helping him with guerrilla sculpture installations, he imparted on me his philosophy of a ‘museum without walls’ where the art was available to people and they didn’t have to go into institutions (and out of their comfort zone) in order experience it.
thicket (636) | 2014
Funnel Tunnel | 2013
heliosection | 2013
bounded operator (chamber #4) | 2012
a light in the attic (chamber #3) | 2010
This installation was part of a group show at the Houston Fire Museum. I made the ladders by cutting octagonal rungs and turning the ends of each (on my grandfather’s lathe) to peg them into the side rails; the ladders were then charred after construction. There are 11 ladders that range in height according to the Fibonacci sequence: 1 extra-tall, 2 tall, 3 medium, 5 short.
rescue | 2009
trepanned | 2006
![This installation was the result of an unusual thought experiment: I was considering cutting the top off (trepanning) my undergrad thesis piece dood [see image in Evolution of Painted Wood section] because it was so cumbersome. Ultimately I couldn’t…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5eb25afd130a7a67ee3cc1b0/1593332738555-ABJWG67N227KLT0NCGV9/DSC_7054.JPG)
This installation was the result of an unusual thought experiment: I was considering cutting the top off (trepanning) my undergrad thesis piece dood [see image in Evolution of Painted Wood section] because it was so cumbersome. Ultimately I couldn’t bring myself to destroy the self-portrait, but it spurred this series of disks; they were so popular they sold immediately, and I ended up making ten in total, and referring to them as hotcakes…
The wall was an attempt at a couple things: a method of display that would also redirect flow in the gallery space, so that the full view of the show wasn’t immediately seen on entry, but there was still a teaser with the low reveal; a way to evoke the memory of an event from my past, when I helped my grandfather rip out ruined drywall from his brother’s flooded house, chopping it out to just above the waterline; and an overarching interest in subverting the architecture in general, since the majority of my work at this point was repurposing architectural refuse and commodifying it.
ten paintings (karabekian) | 2004
a light in the attic (chamber #1) | 2003
sphere of the unknown | 2003
Bronze maquette with sticks and the fully-realized piece, my first real public sculpture. The sphere had pride of place in front of the Admissions Office of the Kansas City Art Institute for a few months. Its location was geographically about halfway between the sculpture department and my house, a block off campus, so I walked by it every day while it stood. I felt satisfied with the outcome, and later, fully validated when KCAI used this image of the piece as a postcard.
The hollow ball (concrete over lath with a steel and plywood framework) was 8’ in diameter, with the sticks cantilevering out another 12 or 13’ into space.
My illustration of the way the mind filters information from the ether; titled after the concept from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest of the ‘combine’. In the novel this is the Chief’s perception of how society’s machinery functions, processing and breaking people down. Classic man vs. nature theme (note the natural cone in tension with the steel cone) that appealed to me greatly as a young artist and still hums beneath my work like an imperceptible biorhythm.
I would later learn that Rauschenberg used this handle Combines to categorize much of his mixed-media work.
Graphite on plaster, steel, dyed grapevines
combine | 2002