I seek to appreciate the human dimension of sensual lived experience through the lens of labor. In 2023/4, I cast the two distinct sides of the iron roof to this sculpture and exhibited them as independent artworks. Nevertheless, something always felt missing. In 2025, I decided that the flat forms needed a unifying structure. Inspired by Robert Venturi’s Ghost House monument in Philadelphia, I cut and welded together steel bars in the form of a nondescript dwelling. Welded to this base, the collected texts evoking labor protests became a form of shelter, a source of protection from the elements.
Slogans, texts and forms in each relief are based on labor rights signage, protest picket signs, court cases on labor rights violations, and handwritten historical documents. The source images that make up each relief were collaged together and layered in a digital image and then painstakingly inverted and chiselled from a resin bonded sand block. Cast iron was poured into each block to form a panel. These eventually became the roof tiles in the finished piece. Descriptions of my process can be found in my Crown Letter entries from November 15th and November 21, 2023.
Labor House, 2025, 17” x 16” x 21,” 43 cm x 40 cm x 53 cm.