Ski Cart

Title: Ski Cart
Place/Time: New Bedford, Massachusetts during March 25th – April 25th, 2015
Artist-In-Residence at the College of Visual and Performing Arts, The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth

Size: 5’6″ long x 25″ wide x 52″ tall
Materials: skis and poles, mill factory wheels, salvaged wood, portable radio, defrost heater unit, dickey, walking cane, shower seat assist stool, wicker seat cover, found hardware, snowpile/trashpile-found: shopping cart, banner, blanket, snow shovel handle, bread tray, car floor matt carpet, and streetside-found: pillowcase, plastic cigarette sale sign, black plastic sheeting, snowbank-snowplow height indicator stakes, umbrella, bungee, rubber stoppers, tarp piece (all materials selected for their specific and inherent story of place relevant to the concepts within this work)

Details (condensed):
I engineered Ski Cart to assist me in physically moving, propelling, through my landscape. I use Ski Cart as a tool, as a human-powered vehicle with wheels or skis that assist my locomotion depending on terrain. Ski Cart is an object yet also a metaphor for the path, the journey, the lifestyle that I am at the same time engineering.

Details (expanded):

Details from April 2020 writing about Ski Cart in its sleeping position (revisited in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic):

Uncertain territory ahead, and wanting to be assured enough of my resilience and adaptability in order to thrive in a new unknown place; this is the theme that has run through my recent works of performative sculpture.

Ski Cart is an adaptive mobile unit able to navigate the terrain with removable wheels to roll, or if needed, with skis to push through snow. It is made with materials gleaned from a massive city snowdump/snowpile, as well as from alleyways and streetsides specific to the city in which it was made to navigate. This cart also transforms into a shelter in place sleeping, resting area. Ski Cart explores the upheaval, turmoil and the fluidity in the definition of home.

I engineered Ski Cart to assist me in physically moving, propelling, through my landscape. I use Ski Cart as a tool, as a human-powered vehicle with wheels or skis that assist my locomotion depending on terrain. Ski Cart is an object yet also a metaphor for the path, the journey, the lifestyle that I am at the same time engineering. My journey is one that embraces physical prowess and training, hard-work, and endurance. I also acknowledge the possibility of moments needing external support. Physical effort and mechanisms of assist is hinted at within this work. Ski Cart is made with materials from areas in which it is meant to maneuver, the edges of places where nature and humans collide leaving a seemingly messy residue. Ski Cart might stand out as an odd contraption but the materials it is made of blend in and thus meld with its urban surroundings. My goal is to live in a way that is resourceful, sensitive to place, and fits my uniqueness yet blends in enough to be safe.