21” x 80” x 20”
Melted vinyl records, dirt from various battlefields, ballistic gelatin, resin, brass oil can, rust, white rose petals, white rice
Civil War-era wood and iron prosthetic leg: crafted from melted vinyl records of The Shirelles’ “Soldier Boy” and femur bone dust.
WWI-era military cavalry boots, WWII-era boot nails, Vietnam War-era laces: crafted from melted vinyl records of Skeeter Davis’s “The End of the World.”
Oil can and homemade tincture: gun oil, rose oil, bacteria cultured from the grooves of Negro prison songs and prison choir records, wormwood, goldenrod, aloe juice, resurrection plant, Apothecary’s rose, and bugleweed.
A mold was made from a Civil War-era wooden and iron leg that an amputee soldier constructed for himself. It was then cast in melted vinyl records of The Shirelles’ 1962 single, “Soldier Boy.” The new leg was fitted inside a pair of WWI-era cavalry boots with boot nails and laces from later wars. Another mold was made from this pairing and cast again in melted vinyl records of Skeeter Davis’s 1962 single, “The End of the World.” It is a sculpture within a sculpture, time and materials folding into themselves. The legs are dragged through ballistic gelatin, a substance used solely to test the effectiveness of bullets on the human body. Here, the powder instead absorbs the impact of scattered wedding rice.
The piece was inspired after reading an entry in a Civil War soldier’s journal, where he describes reconstructing himself so he could attend his daughter’s wedding and dance with her.