Pushkin Roberts Anthology is a show very dear to my heart. It is a collection of works, each based on and titled from a short story that I’m particularly fond of. I think there is something strikingly visual about a good short story which makes it really fun to base art works off of— sometimes a phrase will remind you of a certain image or material and then it just goes from there. Since this is an anthology, I had Philip Aldefolio write a short story in place of an exhibition essay so that it functions as another one of the works in the collection.‍

Dip in the Pool is a story about a man who makes an ill-informed bet with his life savings aboard a cruise ship. For this work I cast a toy slot machine with pigmented wax; I tried to find the reddest red that I could. (The story ends badly.)‍

Tobermory is a story about a genius talking cat who puts a town’s social dynamic at risk by being blunt about the pretentious behaviors of the townspeople. The work is about the standard size of a mousehole, at least based on my research from watching many hours of “Tom and Jerry.” This was made with graphite on plaster.‍

Mildred Fierce is decidedly not a short story but here it is anyway. It is Carol Burnett’s spoof of the movie “Mildred Pierce,” and it makes me laugh. I wanted to make a work that was funny and feminine, soI stuck faux fur onto some size 6 shoes and put a miniature fake tree sideways into the wall. Because everyone knows that the two most feminine things in the world are: 1. Faux fur, and 2. Sideways miniature fake trees.‍

The Nine Billion Names of God is a story about a group of monks who discover how to build a machine that can generate and printout every single one of God’s names. Once the last name is printed the stars in the night sky grow dim. For this one I painted an illustration from an old astronomy book—old enough that it’s from a time where we weren’t even entirely sure how the sky works yet.

I think that stories and visual art have similar functions, that the meaning of them doesn’t come from anything the writer or artist intended or said, but from how the reader or viewer experiences it for themselves. One time I got to talk for a bit with Lani Maestro and she said that the artist’s task is to ask the questions, not give the answers. I hope with this show I’ve asked you some interesting ones.