Tar Roofing Paper

I have worked with tar paper for 23 plus years choosing this material first for its cost-effectiveness as a common roofing material used for over 50 years. Also and especially pertinent to my work, it is made from oil asphalt and petroleum—substances that are harmful to the environment and directly tied to the oil industry and its legacy of spills and contamination. The ends of tar paper rolls are routinely discarded into waste sites, where they leach into the ground and ultimately seep into our groundwater.

I cut the material into hundreds of pieces of varying sizes, shaping the tar paper into undulating forms that capture moments of beauty within a process of toxic transformation. The areas of color suggest erosion caused by chemical seepage. Through the manipulation of this material and its placement in a designed space, the work draws attention to the consequences of our daily living and what we choose to discard. The viewer is confronted with an awe-stricken beauty that reveals how the chemicals we rely on quietly break down the systems that sustain life.

The Cluster series is made primarily with black tar roofing paper and some hand made papers referencing carbon footprints and our global dependence upon oil. Each cluster is based on oil spills.