Sarah Schulman

In American popular speech, the word "yard" refers either to a suburban lawn or an open space for storing goods. In my practice, a "yard" becomes a place where discarded objects find recontextualized meaning when encountered anew. As I move through the cityscape of New York, I not only see things but sometimes feel their weight, density, and volume. My work explores combinations and collections of these different sensations and takes an abstract, whimsical, and humorous perspective to found objects. I am not only inspired by found objects, but also employ them in the making of my work. Some materials include wood, upholstery fabric, metal rebar, flat hook straps, chains, mesh, rope and PVC. I search the surroundings of my studio and the city streets for materials. In the process of deconstructing the materials, I consider how they can be reconstructed to build a new object, with a new sense of weight and scale. A juxtaposition is created when new shapes, forms and colors collide. In these moments the objects and materials are disconnected from their histories and new stories are formed.