8.5 x 11 x .5 inches, Transparencies and wood

This visual poem functions as both a window and a bound book. When the book is “closed,” it reads something like a traditional poem (left to right, top to bottom). The subject of this version of the poem is about looking at a family photograph. But by flipping the pages, lines directing the reader to examine the words in a different set of “steps” are made legible, and a new poem is recovered—this one about America’s history of violence and erasure.

4.8 x 3.23 x 0.59 inches, Wood (Reclaimed Puzzle)

A thought-terminating cliché is a phrase used by someone to shut down dissent, investigation, or further discussion. Whether or not it is done instinctually, a phrase like “it is what it is,” or “that’s just my opinion” is a kind of conversation closer.

This is a sliding puzzle, a simple kind of combination puzzle (like a Rubik’s Cube).

It has a solution but I am much more interested in what is beneath/beside/beyond that solution.

9 x 9 inches, Wood and reclaimed chess pieces

This is based on a puzzle by Rouse Ball’s Mathematical Recreations and Essays.

The instructions are, essentially, as follows. Set up the board so the top left portion is filled with white pawns (8), and the bottom right with black pawns (8). A move consists of moving a piece horizontally or vertically into a space, or jumping over one adjacent piece into the space just beyond the jumped piece. No diagonal moves are allowed, nor is moving backward. The challenge is to exchange all the black pieces with all the white in the fewest possible moves.

It has a solution but I am much more interested in what is beneath/beside/beyond that solution.