MONUMENTS
Ecclesiastes says, “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.” This exhibit features monuments—tombstones, to labors which have come and gone—yet remain. Factories drove the economy of most of the towns where I grew up. They provided jobs and food for thousands of families. Now they merely sit under the sun, returning to the earth. The activity has ceased and they simply are. These structures which represented function and mass production now sit purposeless. This exhibit is an exploration of three factories, and the communities they served: Borg Warner, Muncie, IN; BPB Celotex, Lagro, IN; and Delco Remy, Anderson, IN. The closing of these factories damaged the communities in which I grew up. I created boxes for each factory. The boxes contain multiple paintings within each. There is a dissonance between the boxes and the factories. The factories were created purely for function and mass production. They produced things that were needed. They provided jobs. They put food on families’ tables. The boxes do nothing. They are painstakingly created one of a kind objects. They could not be further from the original purpose of the factories, yet they are monuments to the factories and the people who passed through. They are tombstones. We create tombstones for a person’s life. The tombstone has no function and says virtually nothing about the person whose life it represents. It doesn’t say if they were good or bad, and it doesn’t say whether they deserved to live or die. They simply make us pause and remember that something once was that now isn’t. They are important.
