Mining Industries
Mining Industries is comprised of kilncast glass works showing aerial views of sites in the United States related to several cities — Boston, Corning, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Lowell, Louisville, San Francisco, Seattle, and Shanghai — and the iconic industries associated with their evolution. Within the installation, vinyl cut drawings convey a timeline outlining city boundaries and creating links to industry and population density shifts throughout the 20th century.
Pieces in this series are comprised of stacks of clear kilncast glass blocks topped with detailed renditions of urban sites generated from converted LiDar scans data and output via 3D printing. Sanborn Maps and aerial photographs that reference a time of peak industrial power are layered in between the blocks, so that the imagery is filtered through the polished glass landscape from above and seen through the layers in the mirrored reflection below.
The fragility of glass serves as a metaphor for balance between time, efficiency, and the inability of manufacturing to change and meet future needs. The project aims to reconcile the past with the potential futures of urban industrial centers.
