Dublin Staircase, Maine Woods

Mixed media
2015

In 2014, I attended a two-month residency at the Fire Station Studios in Dublin, Ireland. When I arrived, I covered all the walls in paper and began drawing from photographs of my father’s construction sites and the piles of building debris that fill the woods around his woodshop. When I put up the paper that became “Dublin Staircase, Maine Woods”, the right section fit the wall one side of a conduit line, and the left section followed the open staircase up to a loft. I had no intention that the two sections would eventually become one drawing. However, as my residency progressed I realized “Dublin Staircase, Maine Woods” could itself speak to construction and site specificity. I cut, taped, and folded the drawing to refer to building tarps, further accentuated by the grommets. In this installation at Red Head Gallery in Toronto, I reference the Dublin staircase in masonry twine. This drawing later became an integral component of the installation “When One Space Meets Another” (see Installation Gallery).

Photo credit: Peggy Taylor Reid