Uncommissioned (2021)

Materials: Beeswax, damar resin, wax crayon, oil stick, wood, hardback paper book, acetate.

Materials: beeswax, damar resin, wax crayon, oil stick, wood, hardback paper book, acetate.

Uncommissioned began with a paper wasp nest I found inside the hollow of an abandoned doorway. Next to it was graffiti. One was made by an insect, one by a person. Both had been built into the same forgotten space.

I began photographing graffiti and street art around the city and repainting it in molten beeswax. Each week I made a new painting over the last. The earlier image disappeared, but remained underneath. Over time, the wax became thick enough to hold itself, and the work separated from the wooden support it had been made on.

The piece became a palimpsest. Like the city’s skin, it is made from layers: painted, covered, weathered, and painted again. Most of what is there can no longer be seen, but it still gives the work its structure.

Beeswax matters because it can both preserve and conceal. It holds the images, but it also buries them. This felt connected to the wasp nest, which was also built slowly, layer by layer, until something fragile became solid.

Uncommissioned is about graffiti, memory, and the things that survive beneath the surface. It is about what gets covered over, and what still remains.