Golden Spike: 24 Places
2024
Found ceramic commemorative plates, North American stoneware, digital print with mineral ink, clear glaze.
Dimensions variable.
Golden Spike displays twelve 19th and 20th-century commemorative plates of industrial sites with new ceramic work commemorating the new geological era humans have created, known as the Anthropocene. Twelve cream stoneware plates represent twelve places that were used as evidence in a recent proposal to officially recognize that human activity has changed the geology of the earth.
The title references a marker used by geologists to designate a change in era, and the name of the railroad spike that connected the two ends of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, cinching together the force of American extraction from coast to coast.
Golden Spike uses Americana as a divining tool for the origins of crisis. Together, the twenty-four places in this project trace a long arc of cause and effect, pride and regret, nostalgia and contemporary catastrophe.
Solo exhibition organized by Past Present Projects for Grizzly Grizzly with support from the Emerging Scholars Program of the Decorative Arts Trust and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
Photography by John Kozacheson.