poratability is key

Behold my new treasure:

I set out today looking for one thing to come home with, and here it is. A not-too-big and not-too-small box with drawers and a cover. I'll have to yank out that crazy purple liner, and change the lock, but! it's my new transportable wunderkammer.

For years I've been obsessing over Wunderkammers and within the past month I've developed a use for said obsession-- making my own in various forms. (My theory and reasoning into why it's I'm doing this and the point will follow in its own post, for now, this is all about the box and what I will do with it.)

So, for this round of wunderkammerness, I will be removing the liner, pouring wax, inserting wooden ledges to form a lip for plexi to rest on, and then i will be using this first batch of keys to create coton linter casts.

I have about 100 keys of various sizes, shapes and purposes--these are just the most exciting.

I envision this box turning out to be the collected dissection remnants. When the drawers are opened, you will see these paper keys pinned down and dissected; the black wax acts as it does in traditional dissection trays. There will be text, but placement and words aren't decided yet. I just can't stop thinking about this image of the paper/fragile/meltable key.

Another project I've taken on is my locket:

I bought it from one of the street jewelry sellers in soho for remarkably cheap. The left side is muddled text from Emerson. The only legible "forwards" text reads: "Then the...cape felt by him...The sky is less gran...the population." The backwards "legible" text reads: "or to...senses rain on this...the animal". On the right side I'm going to insert a skeltal study drawing of an elephant.

In some ways I want to embrace a more performative role with building these spaces/objects/relationships. Instead of just showing my hand while making these things, maybe become an actual story teller/performer. Wearing some of the objects (I wear the locket every day as it is) and maybe becoming one of the objects.

This is all leading somewhere. Somewhere being another post.