Erica Young

Beyond Use

In the process of completing a larger project I have been reading quite a lot about material culture lately, as well as 19th century history and the curation of artifacts. This has led me to consider utility and the material nature of objects, and what it means to strip an object of its utility. At the same time I have been considering the concept of the relic and the artifact, and how this state of being beyond use changes the meaning of an object. This gave me the idea of casting a series of small, utilitarian objects and stripping them of their utility in two ways: through ironically casting them in a “utilitarian” material that robs them of their actual purpose and by adding an assortment of organic-looking growths and patinas to these objects, crystallizing them in their post-use state.