10- “Construct” (detail) - Found wood, steel, steel cable, homemade fasteners, concrete blocks (not pictured) - Feb 2015 (some pieces available) I am fairly critical of this piece, looking back. I am humbled by it. At this point, I was kind of full of myself, trying to do too much at once. I had all of these heady ideas about what it all meant. It was this hanging installation that took up the whole student gallery! I definitely had fun, putting it together, installing it, figuring out where to hang cables, making my own fasteners. So it was a good process, even if not the best product. I present this, even now, because I do love some of the details in it. I like the contrast between materials and surfaces and textures. I also appreciate that this piece represents my current idea of “Deconstructing Reality.” We try to build our own realities, our own sense of self-importance. But in doing so, so much of what we do just reveals our own insecurities. The more we build up, the more we reveal our cracks. White fragility is like that. The more we defend and say, “Hey! I’m not racist!” The more we seem to show off how truly racist we are. I’ve become more aware, lately, about how obvious some things are. We can have an all-white or mostly white school in a diverse community, and we can still try to claim that we aren’t racist. Which is ridiculous. We can move out to the upper class, mostly-white suburbs, in order to “get away from the bad part of town” and still claim that we aren’t racist. Which is ridiculous. That’s where this current project of mine, “Deconstructing Reality,” feels really important to me. It isn’t actually deconstructing anything: it’s recognizing what is already happening, and admitting that we are somewhat out of control.
