Laid (Time-) Table with Cycads

2015, 92" x 57" x 192", glass, wood, paint, cold fusion, permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design.

Laid (Time-) Table with Cycads, combines the genres of still life and landscape to juxtapose the current age with ages past. Atop Laid (Time-) Table with Cycads is a still life composition that includes historic symbolic objects referring to the splendor and excess of the Anthropocene and the stratigraphic layer humanity will leave on Earth. Drawings, books, chalices, food, rope, and a viola can be found scattered among crumpled tablecloths and bits of other human detritus. 

Beneath the table, a phantasmagoric paleo-landscape unfolds, alluding to Deep Time. Extinct flora including Sphenophyllum (alive from the Devonian to Triassic periods) and Barinophyton (alive from the Devonian to the Carboniferous periods) mingle with early diverging flora such as ferns, mosses, cycads, and gingkos. Early diverging flora are considered to be ancient plants, the descendents looking strikingly similar to their ancestors despite the survival of multiple mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. At three locations in the composition, cycads pierce through the table offering a connection between worlds and alluding to the constancy of life..

2015, 92" x 57" x 192", glass, adhesive, wood, paint

2015, 92" x 57" x 192", glass, adhesive, wood, paint