Life size image of a rat placed amongst accumulated garbage. I started pasting these up during the 3 week garbage strike in May of 1979. Never intending to defend rats, I wanted to point out how we had created a habitat for them, and they would naturally occupy it. The city has it’s own ecosystem with a delicate balance. Rats were very visible in those days where I lived in the Wall St. area. Especially around dusk when the human traffic would abruptly taper off leaving all the days harvest for the first rats to discover. During this time I studied rat behavior and found them to be
similar
ropeople in many ways, not least of which was the ability to
work together as a community, making them possibly better suited
to living in NYC at times. Also it has been said that rats possess
a culture- if you define culture as the ability to pass information
through generations without direct experience- such as a fear
of predators and pesticides. Humans are the only other species
that can do that.
I
wanted to impart a physical presence to microscopic organisms. These
arethe new Atomic bomb- our next war ismore likely to be framed interms
of germ warfare than radiation or bullets. From Mad Cow to Legionaries
Disease, to the common cold, our culture shudders in fear of the unknown
lurking invisibly in our personal space. If you home is your castle,
think what a spread it must look like to a virus. These objects are
installed on the wall to make viewers feel as though they are part
of an enormous stream of minute particles, swimming all around us.
We are but one in a stream of innumerable tiny players. 
He
also explained how new inventions- like Olestra, the fake fat,
actually work in our bodies, to initiate tiny changes that occur
at the invisible, molecular level. I teamed up some of these
contaminants with natural forms- for example the spinal column
of a rainforest newt was replaced with a chain of nitric acid
(acid rain) molecules. Or, using the Olestra structure, I integrated
it with a filter-feeding squid and an abstracted human digestive
system, to demonstrate how this new ”miracle” molecule
can sweep everything out as it washes speedily through our system,
making it possible to gorge and starve at the same time. Only
in America.
Miro-scopic micro organisms, these were inspired also by one
my favorite artists, Juan Miro.
Welded
life-size steel salmon stuffed & shrink-wrapped with plastic. Collection
of Honolulu Academy of Art.
Series
of Hall Clocks, Early Childhood Center # 2 , The Bronx, commissioned
by the School Construction Authority & NYC Percent for Art.
A series of 6 clock housings circling the interior hall clocks
of the school representing fast and slow passage of time. Configured
into shapes like a turtle, some racing rabbits, a sloth, a jaguar,a
comet, and a fossil, these cutouts are made of bronze, aluminum
and brass, and are paired on the different floors of the school.
and
politicians in whom we place our trust, those who get to determine
what levels of risk we should tolerate. These levels are often regulated
more for manufacturers ability to comply than with the health of
residents and workers. Note concrete rats cast into the rubble, and
in the image to the left, an inhabitant, stepping in as a metaphor
for the the American consumer, chews on it’s own tail.