Curiosity Boxes
These "Curiosity Boxes" are made from found boxes, digital photo collages, old prints, beads and other found objects. In concept, the boxes refer to the baroque wunderkammer, which often mixed genuine natural history specimens with fantastic items such as unicorn horns and displayed both alongside works of art. When we read about science today, we are asked to accept ideas and discoveries based on concepts which we lack the training to evaluate personally. We are sure only that some of what we now believe to be true will be thought in the future to be foolish and some of what we now dismiss as crackpot will later be accepted as fact. These boxes address that uncertainty by mixing the supposedly factual with the fictional in a spirit of "What if?" The distinctions between scientific, artistic, and literary components are deliberately blurred by their manner of presentation. Models of microorganisms masquerade as jewelry; kaleidoscope patterns become the plans for a greenhouse. Phrases from novels are used as scientific labels while scientific diagrams are used as decorative elements. The viewer is invited to enter miniature, contained worlds where widely disparate elements are brought together somewhat as they might be in a dream, when our unconscious minds mix the contents of our memories in new and unexpected ways. Which ones, the boxes ask, will turn out to be the more true in the end?