What they looked like in 1996

Following are some images from an installation I did as part of my thesis show before finishing undergrad in New Mexico. Before the buttons I simply glued cut out paper to nails. Not pictured: a chair I shot up and destroyed with a shotgun, then put back together and planted grass in. This show was the first incarnation of the work that has evolved into the recent button collage installation here. Returning the gallery to prior form involved hours and hours of spackling.








Immediately after graduation I did some portable versions of the work for a show at a gallery in Gallup New Mexico, at a gallery run by an eccentric Croatian expatriot. I remember a blizzard on my the way out there in which I literally couldn't see the front of my own car. The collages above are made from multiple images, the ones below are single images cut apart and spread out on the nails.