PTGS & SCLPTS

In Philadelphia - a city rife with culture and symbolism - carved stone motifs provide both decorative and symbolic significance adorning the structures of historic buildings. While some of these symbols have ancient origins, I recreate them using bits of printed daily news. Appearing heavy, each piece is mostly hollow under the exterior coating of the newspaper pulp. Once isolated, the pieces and their meanings are literally and figuratively disconnected from their structural supports - the buildings and the context that originally imbued them with significance. I then stack them in precarious groupings, so they appear somewhat structured but not necessarily placed in their intended position. These new haphazard orientations invite reinterpretation of the forms' symbolic encoding. The fragility and precariousness of the stacks parallels the contingency of meaning itself - how cultural symbols, when severed from their origins, can be reconfigured and their meanings can shift over time. The stacks begin to feel like ruins, fragments from a future when Philadelphia is the historic past.