Educational Gallery

I Made a Mess of It, or A nature documentary

On display June 5-28, 2026

About the Exhibit:
The process of breaking apart reveals our unknown parts. The way something breaks apart makes turns inside out, and offers us a chance to reassemble. In this exhibit, clay plays with the transformational capacity of discarded material, much of which will not break down in our lifetimes and many more lifetimes to follow. How can decomposition become a strategy for meaning making with material that refuses to actually decompose? What relationship do we have with its transformation? The video and collages feature sculptural objects created from repurposed materials that are part of the invisible infrastructure of our lives, such as packaging material and containers for produce, inviting you to recognize your entanglement with their material afterlives.

A nature documentary meditates on landscape on film and pokes at the borders of documentary as a genre. If documentary is meant to provide a record of something, then what is the responsibility of the one who records? If to record is the process by which we repeat until committed to memory, then documentary is the medium of creating memory, and memory is imperfect and personal. I assemble a transforming world inspired by Jill Johnston’s definition of intermedia, articulated as, “Re-integration. The everything as everything. The organism as totally illegal. The legality of nothing but pleasure.” clay gets intimate with everyday materials through commitment to DIY queer aesthetics. Resisting internalized perfectionism that hungers for polished and sanitized art products, residues of their process litter their works, highlighting the unfinished or mistake: a misread line, a poorly lit green screen, scuff marks, eraser crumbs.

You’re invited to experience this space as a world still becoming.