UC Santa Cruz

A Crystalline Quilt for the Thick Present (CQTP) is a larger-than-body scale sculptural installation centered on an assemblage of materials salvaged from the Dimeo Lane landfill in Santa Cruz. CQTP is composed of a multi-level tessellated geometric array of repeating triangular forms arranged on the gallery floor, mirrored by large, chaotic assemblage of tangled linear elements suspended overhead. Through the formal metaphors of the tangle, the crystal lattice, and a textile quilt, this work uses the landfill site as a case-study in the layered, entangled, superimposed nature of time, and proposes the ordering and reordering of matter as a record of these complex temporalities. CQTP challenges the viewer to join and be implicated in this investigation of the material histories of trash, and more broadly to consider the implications of waste and consumption, humans in relationship to the more-than-human world, and creative re-thinkings of our changing futures in the Anthropocene.