The House of Observation started as an exploration of my backyard in Saint Louis in the fall of 2011. My neighbors had had a party which they did not promptly clean up. There was a folding table, cups and cans strewn across the backyard. At the time I was taking an anthropology class that covered methods of Archeology such as the process of laying down a grid, usually of 5m squares, as a way of beginning the excavations. They would then walk up and down the grid covering each square meticulously. I thought it would be a funny and interesting way to start my fall semester by gridding off my backyard and walking to each section to collect, observe the evidence of the presence of mankind AKA my rambunctious neighbors. I was surprised as I combed my backyard that there was more trash than just that from the partying neighbors. I found a lot of small bits of glass, plastic, cigarette butts, bottle caps, etc. I began making drawings as a way to catalogue these findings. This turned into a series of prints and installations.
After the initial iteration of this project I wanted to expand the conversation away from the trivial things I found in my backyard and into something more social and collaborative. I realized that I had been thinking a lot about the observation of this trash but that I didn’t really have much connection to the trash and it wasn’t very meaningful. I began to ask for people to send me objects in the mail that they wanted me to observe for them. I created a blog and started logging all of the objects that I was mailed. I responded by drawing the objects and that turned into the project of creating an etching for each object.
Hampden Gallery: UMASS Amherst
The culmination of this project was a show at the Hampden Gallery at UMASS in Amherst, MA. It was a collaborative show with my mother, artist Claudia Sperry. I showed all of the etchings I had made of each object that was sent to me.