Christyn Overstake
#76 – 41.6764 N, 86. 2520 W. Cherry (2019)
cast iron, steel
12 x 12 x 6 in.
$850
I embrace the unexpected in industrial processes. From my background as a TIG welder/fabricator I have developed a series of abstractions based in subversion of production methodologies, injecting playful experimentation into relationships with material. These objects are industrial media produced by repetition of action paralleling mass production. The outcomes of repetition are not pursuing sameness but instead deviation. The repetition yields unpredictable results. Adaptation requires mutation and selection. Biological systems adapt, industrial systems—rigid and brittle—do not. I endeavor to blend the evolutionary developments of biological systems with the precision and intimacy of material expertise.
Amber Scoon, theorist, states, “Form and the activities that create form are one thing.” My forms have become lineages and have developed languages of mark and pattern. The coordinates, sites of creation, have created maps of travel. The furnaces that produced the metal are named, identifying each object as a metallurgical sample of the artist-built machine that produced it. These forms and maps create a narrative of evolution of form and the activities that create form.
I use a subtractive method in bonded sand. In the decay diptych, the waste was preserved after production of another object and repurposed, creating a document of deterioration.
© Christyn Overstake