Medium:
Upcycled Rug, Paints, & Gold
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Dimensions:
​~4.5ft x 3ft
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Year Completed:
2026
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Description:
This piece begins with a strawberry cut directly from a family rug and repositioned as an object of focus. Once part of a domestic surface—background, decorative, easy to overlook—it is isolated, altered, and made to hold attention. The strawberry, often tied to sweetness, femininity, and desire, becomes something more: a site for recording.
Painted over and inscribed with tally marks reminiscent of those carved into jail cells, the form becomes a record-keeper of endurance. These marks carry a sense of confinement and repetition, where time is felt, counted, and survived. They flatten experience into units while still pointing to the emotional weight behind each mark. What is being counted remains deliberately open.
The title, The Number of [Enter Sardonic Response Here], invites the audience to complete the phrase. Responses often arrive as humor edged with discomfort or truth—failed dates, quiet resentments, small absurdities, private coping mechanisms. In participating, viewers shift the work from a fixed object into a shared ledger of lived experience. The humor functions less as deflection and more as a way of making repetition visible and speakable.
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Ultimately, the work asks what we choose to keep track of, and what it means to mark time in this way. When does counting become a form of control, and when does it become a way to endure—or to be heard?