The Supreme Clientele is a 9 piece judicial juggernaut that uses white pine tricycles to run these mean streets and dispense justice to us all with their new Conservative majority.  The gang's ringleader is torn between the two raging factions as they pull him toward their own agendas.  The suspense is gripping and the satire ripe.

Documentation of the parading of the Supreme Clientele to an installation at Cohen Plaza for the Maryland Institute College of Art's 2019 Graduate Thesis Show.  The parade route started at the studios at the Lazarus Center on Howard St. and North Ave. and ran across the Howard Street bridge and up Mt. Royal Avenue.  
Revelers include:
Sandy 
Lisa 
Meghanna 
Ben
Alexandros
Sarah
Julia
Justin
Tony
Nilam

The installation entitled "Get Lo" was a combination of varied carnivalesque practices that I have been exploring outside of traditional float making.  The focus of the work is more narrowly addressing the play between spectator and participant and how the cycle of playing those roles is made possible to repeat annually. The newer aspects of artmaking I have been working with are Flambeaux torches, photography, video, and immersive reality video. 

"Pissed" is an interactive installation that is activated by the presence of the spectator once they decide to participate.  The concept of the kinetic and how it allows the viewer to occupy the form is explored through sensor activated mechanisms.  Paintings in the installation explore the intoxicating effects of the carnival through inclusive act of wearing a mask to obscure one's identity.

Part of the spectacle of the parade, and of the Mardi Gras float is the fleeting, ephemeral quality of its lifespan.  It is only seen for a brief moment, and then it's gone.  As a means of completing that cycle of  a float's life, I perform a burning that acts a way of destroying the iconography so that new growth can occur.

Secretary of Education is an extension in my interest in a crank/shaft mechanism, and the figurative possibilites that arise out of the dueling cam sytem.  As a former teacher, I have a strong connection to public education and the ways that service is being manipulated.  The installation uses sculpted and actual books that have been shot with assault rifles and shotguns in a reference to school shootings and a gesture toward the figure bobbeling a stack.  This element of trompe l'oil is an newly recongnized element in my work that has me searching for a meaning. 

The ephemeral quality of the Mardi Gras spectacle comes from the brief, passing quality of the experience.  The floats are only viewed by any spectator for a few minutes before it is gone forever.  The idea limiting their existence, and creating a tangible amount of time they were available led me to burn "Secretary of Education".

"Projected Carnival" is a video installation that uses the documentation from my body of kinetic float installations, and their destruction footage, to question the projected places of power held by those currently using the Carnivalesque to gain and hold power.

This first exploration into the recontextualizing of Mardi Gras float construction allowed me to see the way scale, light and kinetic activity play out in a formal space.  The movement of the mechanism began an interest in pairing the motion with a figure in the current political climate.  

"Communications Commission" is a kinetic installation that uses a hydraulic pump system to animate the sculpture of a figure driving a Barbi Ferrari.  The combination of burned float skirting, and the alluminum dubloons used at Mardi Gras are in a dialog that sets the stage for the spectator to kneel at the sculpture to activate it.