In the fall of 2019, I moved to a new studio. I began to consider the infrastructure directly surrounding this studio, such as the University of Arkansas surplus warehouse and the University recycling center and dumpsters. This thinking led me to conceive of sculptural installations that pointed towards larger systems. The pallet—which I started to see as symbolic of the support structures for global capitalism—stacked up haphazardly behind the studio building became my primary material for sculptural works that considered the relationship between things and people, and how this can show evidence of larger broken systems.
I chose pallets because of their story and history. Pallets became standardized and easily stackable in the 1940s due to WWII, and the need for easier and faster shipments of goods; pallets became the key to the US military logistics strategy. From this turning point, pallets have become the backbone of the movement of goods globally—these cheap wooden structures that are often discarded as trash after a single trip. Paper is a carrier of information, yet is also obsolete once the information has been transferred or expired. Combined and layered these materials become ghosts of what they were, memorials to their pasts as single-use items. In a space together, these things become hazy remnants and hauntings of what the things were.
