Wall Segments No.17 (With a Cog)

Looking back at this piece from 2015… it feels very representative of the kind of work I was making at that point. Things very object-based, very material-driven, and pretty heavily influenced by industrial forms.

The base is MDF, and then along the bottom I attached the wo reclaimed wood boards. I liked the way they grounded the piece physically, almost like a ledge or a remnant of a wall that’s been cut away. They’re not decorative so much as structural… something that feels salvaged or repurposed.

The red shape in the center is what everything revolves around. It’s loosely inspired by a pulley or a wheel… something functional, something meant to turn or transmit force. Around the edge are eight embedded hex nuts, and then the cog right in the middle, almost like a focal point or a hub. Even though nothing actually moves, there’s a strong suggestion of motion and mechanics.

The surface itself is pretty restrained compared to some of my later work. I only built it up slightly using joint compound and a fabric mesh, just enough to break up the flatness. Then I scratched into it, scuffed it up, and let those marks stay visible. I wasn’t trying to hide process at all—if anything, I wanted it to feel worn, handled, and used.

This piece is part of my Wall Segments series and sits squarely in that period where I was really interested in things that felt weathered, industrial, and ambiguous in function. Objects that look like they belong somewhere specific, but you’re not quite sure where—or what they were originally for.

That tension between familiarity and uncertainty has always been important to me, and this piece is very much rooted in that idea.