In sculptural works and monoprints that monumentalize the most humble of materials, I cut, stack, and join flat generic/universal box template forms to create geometric volumes that evoke ancient architectural structures.
As a professor of industrial design at the University of Kansas, May Tveit has brought numerous students to visit the Lawrence Paper Company. This massive manufacturing facility produces corrugated materials, packing products, and cardboard boxes. During a residency there, she had the opportunity to explore the formal and conceptual qualities of cardboard—study that ultimately led to a personal investigation of the “physical and emotional aspects of compartmentalization, memory, and sacred space.” The works on view here grew out of that thinking. Each is roughly as tall as the artist herself, alluding to the body as yet another type of container, one that metaphorically holds so much more than any cardboard box filled with consumer goods.
