Memory Functions

2022
Recycled paper pulp and steel wire
The Brooklyn Home Company, Brooklyn, NY

Memory Functions consists of two complementary repurposed paper mobile installations in The Brooklyn Home Company’s new eco-friendly residential suite. Memory Store on the eastern end and Memory Plus on the opposite end to the west, together reflecting on bringing our old memories into a new living environment and building fresh memories. 

Memory Store is a cloud of white mobiles that changes its color as the sun travels. I chose white to hint at a hopeful new beginning, like the excitement I feel when starting a brand-new sketchbook. Memory Plus is cheerful; wire forms create line drawings in the air and connect colorful giggling puffy dots.

The mobiles are made with recycled paper pulp “Cookies”.  I collect used photo-background paper from artists and photographers in my Brooklyn studio building and then break it down to pulp and formulate it with bookbinders' glue into an air-dry clay.  The rich colors come directly from the colors of the donated paper; there are no added paints or pigments. I mix pulps the way I would mix paints to make additional colors and effects, by blending blue pulp and red pulp to make a purple clay, for example. Mushy pulps make homogeneous colors, while crumbly pulps have a stippled effect. Finely blended pulps form a smoother surface like macaroons while coarser pulps become bumpier like oatmeal cookies. They are lightweight and durable when dry and create airy mobiles that move in response to us when we walk by them and stir the air.

Photography: Matthew Williams and Yuko Nishikawa