limited edition of 20
glass, paper, and metal, 10.5" x 8" x 7"
2004

SHREDDER: an Autobiography, the book of twelve bottles, being the chapters.

The image: a shredding machine spews shreds of bills, tax forms, photographs, and other paper history cleaned out of one’s files, creating a conical mountain of data.  A chronicle of life as confetti or snow flakes.

I shred copies of family photographs, articles which preceded my birth, my birth certificate, report cards, memorabilia of cherished friends, broken heart times, flight logs, show invitations, and reviews and documentation of my artwork.  The salt, the tears, the sweet, the sweat.

I painstakingly replicated each item.  Old photos were reproduced on real photographic paper, report cards on cardstock, newspaper reviews printed on actual newsprint.  Photographic paper sounds sharp while newsprint sounds soft.  I call it the chomp. 

The material was chronologically organized then shredded.  The shreds become reordered, like the shuffling of a deck of cards - reincarnated in a new event.  It is a purposeful act; an ersatz “destruction.”  It is a deconstruction, a transformative reconstruction.  I make an assumption that the data has new meaning in this different form.