Urchin
2020
Routine can afford us mental and emotional bandwidth. Driving to the store or getting lunch for example becomes so second nature we can generally multitask during the activity as we go on “auto-pilot”. However, after having done something a number of times, and once we have lost that sense of newness, our minds tend to demand further stimulation.
Entertainment in the form of music, art, movies, or books can be simple distractions to keep the droll façade of boredom and regularity at bay. Unfortunately, these distractions are just distractions and this façade of boredom is only assumed familiarity that has been left to fester on the metaphorical shelf-of-life. Beneath this veneer of the “familiar” are uncountable unknowns. These unknowns are unknown unknowns that can be both beautiful and tragic.
We plaster this idea of being familiar on top of something we feel we should know in order to make ourselves comfortable, and yet it leaves us blind to the potential that is beneath.
This piece that I have dubbed “Urchin” is not beautiful on it’s own. It requires components that most of us use every day. These components are then displayed in such a way that it creates an uncommon light projection for the viewer to observe. This light projection touches on beauty and the general idea of aesthetics but beneath that there is more.
My desire with this piece was to compel the viewer such that they are inspired to see that the ordinary can still be exciting and that the things we see every day can still leave us breathless only by changing our perspective a bit.




Process