Cure: Gold
Roadkill deer bones, 24 karat gold leaf
Dimensions Variable.
2016
Multiple installations including, the Morris Graves Museum, Faulconer Gallery, Mt. Mary University, Olsen Larson Galleries, and the Santa Fe Art Institute.
Year round, the highways and roadsides near my home in Central Iowa are littered with road kill. In the early spring I walk creek beds and ditches to retrieve their bones washed away and cleaned by vultures and insects. Using my hands and sandpaper I polish the bones to a porcelain shine and then engrave an image of a lacy network onto their surface. With a jeweler’s tool, I carve the bones and remove the marrow from their core. Once hollow and clean I gild the internal chamber with 24 karat gold. I am building a precious relic of something silent and wild that lives and dies by our agriculture, our economies, and our speed.
VIDEO:
Santa Fe Art Institute
2015
PRESS:
Sanchez, Brianne, “The Lovely Bones”, dsm Magazine, March/April 2017 (PDF)