shifted

Finding:
While living in medium sized town home complex, I watched plastic Venetian blinds being thrown into the trash every time a resident moved out.  Seeing the large quantity of material being discarded because of a minor blemish; I finally decided to intervene and attempt to transform the blinds into something to be loved again.

Thoughts:
In the beginning, the process involved in creating this piece was the most astounding. Hours turned to days, into weeks then months of continuously repeating the exact same motion. I reflected on how I repeated other patterns in my life, over and over. This was a very meditative piece to create. It is so easy to view my life as a being stagnant or stuck when looking at the repetition of eating, working, sleeping, etc. But as the piece evolved, I started to see that my life formed a wonderful picture if I changed my perspective. This piece, like life, is not meant to be viewed one moment at a time. It is meant to be viewed as a whole, from all angles, in motion. Only then can the single stagnant moment of an act be seen as a beautiful and necessary condition of the whole.

Presenting:
The blinds had to be dismantled into just the strips of plastic themselves. Each strip was then cleaned to remove years of dust that had settled stubbornly onto the plastic. Each strip was then cut lengthwise into either two or three thinner pieces. The thinner pieces are then wrapped around itself into a circle form taking care to overlap the beginning and ending of the piece in the same point. Once curved, The circular shape of the plastic was fanned out and held in place with superglue as a temporary fix.
The pieces were then arranged by height. Starting in the center with the lowest pieces, they were stitched one at a time onto stretched canvas working their way outward rising in height as they went.

Details In Order From Left To Right:

Process Documented: