Precious Routes and Place Settings consider the absurdity of mental constructions of the past and conceptions of the future. Precious Routes documents the last three years of daily routes to work and to school, on foot and by bike. Inspired by the Victorian practice of creating mementos for the dead through embroidery, photography, and hairwork, these cyanotypes create keepsakes out of the mundane routine of getting from one place to another. Treating this often forgotten time with the same reverence and sentimentality found in Victorian memento mori objects questions the way past experiences and routines become idealized in memory.
While Precious Routes deals with the past, Place Settings uses the layout of dinner place settings to confront the unpredictability of the future. The diagram of the place setting allows one to know exactly what to expect: the dishes will be set in their places, exquisite food will come out, the diners will come and enjoy themselves, and everything will take place as planned. Or will it? As the plates, utensils, and glasses are arranged, something inevitably is set off-kilter, none of the knives fit the pattern exactly, and the projected future disintegrates. Yet, despite the disconnect between expectation and reality, the design for the future endures. In both Precious Routes and Place Settings the constructed memory, regardless of its accuracy, is what is chosen to recall.
