Nostalgia

Winding dirt roads through my small town, hometown. The cool air moving through the open window on a summer night. Taking the long way home, detour after detour just to avoid parking in the driveway. That little taste of freedom that comes with a license at 16 and a job for gas money.

Scratchy upholstery that’s never worn no matter how many family gatherings have made themselves at home. Sitting on top of the cushions to brush Grandpa’s hair while looking out the window when they lived in the House on the Hill. Finding photographs of its maroon and beige stripes as backdrop of birthday parties. There’s Noni holding someone as an infant. The itch of fabric on my face as Grandma makes me turn around to nap while she watches “Days of Our Lives”.

Warm sand, bare feet, scrunched up toes digging down. Book open wide with a thumb in the spin, blocking out the sun - forgot to put on sunscreen. Roll over - shift around - make a divot for elbows to prop up shoulder blades. Tide’s coming in.

Neither here nor there, nowhere and everywhere, finding way through familiarity based on false memory.

Glitter

The hexagon gems that haunt craft spaces were invented in 1934 by Henry Ruschmann when he designed a machine that combined a wood chipper with a paper shredder to meticulously cut plastic into itty-bitty pieces.* This mechanization was originally intended for photographic paper cutting but would occasionally produce haphazard fragments. Based on employees decorative interactions, these pieces became a marketable good rather than castoff of an imperfect process. Like the sticky-note, glitter was invented by accident. 

The embrace of glitter can be seen everywhere. While it may come and go with fashion trends in its ubiquitousness, iridescence has been used to blur gender, attract aura, and reflect opulence within popular culture and counterculture alike. The recent resurgence of glitter make-up trends has been influenced by Euphoria with the creative directors bringing Y2K color theory into a glamorized world of drugs, rhinestones, and scandal. I’m fascinated by this recent reincarnation of glitter as identity and signaling because the show is both a fictional drama and an aesthetic for a generation of viewers that are coming-of-age simultaneously. For a plastic-based trend to emerge so vehemently in pop culture DESPITE our current awareness of climate change and pollutant products is fascinating. That GenZ and Millenials have reusable straws trending on TikTok while uploading bedazzling selfies is a vibe tbh. 

While previous metallics within artwork came from ground up minerals like mica, I consider true glitter to originate with Ruschmann’s invention. Glitter within the archive then becomes tied with kitsch, camp, and Age of Plastics. It has never been limited to mere material either. Tied up in queer spaces, punk scenes, and art theory, glitter reflects and refracts the environments it appears in. If the future is kitsch, then it’s going to be an apocaglitz futurity of sharp-edge hexagons in aluminum coated ferocity.

Pink

So-bright-it-hurts pink polyester yarn is paired with magenta scrubby, tinsel yarn to cast on a simple crochet chain. Tangling fibers into a puff stitch, the structure is being built in panels that combine together to form a stalactite structure for strands of mylar balloon remnants to be woven and draped through. The soft sculpture invites touch with finger-width sized holes incorporated into the crochet structure. It sits on my couch in a sunbeam awaiting further attention.

I brush my hands off on my jeans while picking up the space to go home. A glimmer of glitter catches my eye as it falls away to find home elsewhere. Squatting down, I find all the pink of my practice has come to rest in the concrete floor’s fissures. Little hexagons of pink micro-plastic are caught in shreds of sheared bits of pastel pink tulle. Is this what algae looks like to flamingos as it drifts around their legs? If this is what’s left on the floor, how much of my practice have I accidentally ingested while focusing on embellished moments? Am I an ecosystem of microplastics?

Pink as PINK became permanently vivid with the rise of plastics. Previously within paintings, pink pigments were yellow, gray, and muddier than the popular pastel - neon hue we see today. Because it’s new within my work, I’m considering the contemporary history of pink as it relates to the commodification and objectification of femininity into popular culture and mass goods. I use the color to highlight artifice. PINK as a material is a nod to kitsch and synonym for plastic within my work.