Soft Remains
Soft Remains explores the tension between change and preservation, the past and present, the tangible and intangible. This sculpture, composed of six steel boxes lined with stitched-together paint rags, serves as both a vessel and a boundary—a way of holding onto remnants of a previous chapter while acknowledging the inevitability of transformation.
The paint rags, salvaged from my former classroom as a middle school art teacher, bear the traces of my students' gestures—marks made not by my hand, but as a result of my instruction. Though I did not physically create these imprints, they exist because of me, carrying a sense of indirect authorship. By repurposing these rags, I give them a new form, allowing them to exist beyond their original function.
Encasing these soft, textured remnants within rigid steel structures contrasts materials and meaning. The steel boxes act as protective shells, preserving the rags within and imposing containment. This duality reflects my own experience with change—how memory and identity shift over time and how we seek to preserve what we fear losing. The work becomes an object of reflection, a meditation on transition, and a quiet acknowledgment of the past as it shapes the present. By elevating these discarded materials, I engage in an act of care and reconsideration. The sculpture is both archive and artifact, a place where what was once ordinary becomes something to be held onto, reconsidered, and, ultimately, transformed.