In 2022 MW went to SXSW to present an installation we called “Islands”.

I helped lead a team through concept and execution, developing “The Burnout of The Mounds” a project that calcified our sentiments of exhaustion, loss, and intense numbness on a personal and environmental level.

Thank you to my collaborators Emmanuelle John, Geoff Banzoff, Karen Lambke, Billiam Rodgers, Charles Tuttle, Monica Garcia, and Naomi Gibbons

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Exterior

At the beginning of this project Emmanuelle John and I were joking around and said “What if we just made brown lumps, like a clipart island but without the palm tree.” We laughed, it stuck.

The exterior of the space served to encapsulate 3 dioramas and tell an overarching narrative about “The Burnout Monster” and its aptitude for smothering and dragging living creatures into the depths of the sea to feed on their life forces.

The form for “The Burnout Monster” was an expansion on the previous work of Emmanuelle John and Karen Lambke, and the supporting narrative can be seen here, written by Billiam Rodgers. The exterior texture was formulated by myself and the application was entirely a group effort.

Worm Rave

You know that feeling where you’re trying to be blissfully ignorant while the world feels like it’s collapsing around you? Well we do. Our largest diorama in this piece depicts worms at a rave on the edge of a forest fire. Some worms are covering the story in a news crew, some are eating pizza, some are making out, one is tripping, and someone must be manning the emergency helicopter attempting to extinguish the flames.

Things have been intense y’all. The substructure was made by Geoff Banzoff, light programming by Charles Tuttle, Sky Painting by Naomi Gibbons, and I did most of the rest of the materials sourcing, sculpting, and installation with support from the team.

Katamari Lintball

In order to create things everyday, you have to have consistent creative resource to draw from. Often times, ideas come from personal experience and sometimes that experience is hard. To professionally make “art”/”creations”/”whatever” it can feel like you consistently have to bring emotional offerings to the table as tribute to insure you have a well to pull form later on. Sometimes you have no other choice but to imbue the things you make with your soul.

Based on the game Katamari Demancy, this floating ethereal space shows how the emotional detritus of our lives can start to assume form. This was also an opportunity to have this piece function as a shared altar.. to potentially shed/acknowledge some of the hurt that was a part of the last couple years.

Concepting by me. Substrate by Geoff Banzoff, Background paint by Geoff Banzoff and I, Materials submissions by the whole team, Fiber sculpture by Karen Lambke. Here’s the ISpy-esque poem I wrote to accompany this diorama.

Anxiety Spheres

The idea for this diorama was “complete overwhelm”. As Charles Tuttle put it, “It’s that feeling you get when everything is just too much and you’re paralyzed to do anything about it.” This is a major element of burnout. There’s almost a breaking point where all of the things, whether helpful, necessary, or harmful all start to fight for a too-small piece of mental real estate. Here, anxieties appear as literal thought bubbles to an obviously struggling worm.

I had an overarching goal with this work to be able to use playful and almost child-like forms to get at harder and more adult themes. This is very common in cartoons and worked well here.

I designed and hand drew all of the icons, fabricated them with support from Karen Lambke, and fabricated and installed the anxiety spheres around my hand sculpted worm. Geoff Banzoff made the table and surrounding structure.