BigGulp® Fountain™
2022
Mixed media sculpture, wood, steel, paper mache, sculptamold, aquarium filter pad, plastic cups, hot glue, 90 x 55 x 11 inches (installed)
After making requiem, I had these stacks of big gulp cups in my studio, and I knew they could be something. I was doing a lot of drawing at the time as part of the Art Therapy class I was taking. Doodling was a mandatory part of the curriculum. This image came to me pretty much wholesale, and I thought it was really great, so I built it. The style of the pedestals was inspried by neoclassical columns, of course, in reference to the BigGulp’s position and importance within American society. I constructed everything so that it could be taken apart, which meant I was able to move the sculpture around to different sites. It works really well as a selfie backdrop, which is also very American. I think in the Slurpee scenes, the flower dancer in requiem was experiencing some kind of consumer-goods instigated transcendence and freedom. It’s probably more accurately a state of addiciton, but the high can feel like release in the the moment. I am interested in the juxtapositon of Slurpee imagery and waterfall imagery in that video, and in my work in general. Both in their own way can be contested sites in which water, pleasure and consumer culture intersect.