Candace Rose

Obsessions: objects, shadows, and light

I walk. I look. I find . . .

. . . and it seems I’m genetically predisposed to picking up bits and pieces that catch my interest.

I’m intrigued by the detritus of the sidewalk and road, the oddities of yard sales and thrift stores, and the treasures languishing in random attics of friends and family. As I work with the objects, cleaning and coloring and pairing one with another, I ponder their history. Someone manufactured the essential components and then designed and made something useful—which, in the natural and/or accidental course of things—became cast aside as irrelevant or lost. Someone had a bad day when that tire blew apart, or the carriage bolt worked loose and dropped away, or the camera lens sheared a focusing pin.

As machinery and households molt and shed things, my job is to make use of what comes my way. I wonder about their story as I figure out how to make stuff hang together in a congruent whole, which often emerges as a face with a personality, or as an entity with a sound or kinetic component.

Recycling and reusing contributes to my incentive to give continued life to these acquired objects. I’m also intrigued by the simple beauty of the shape or function of an object, and basically, I find pleasure in joining cool things together to create a new creation.

In addition to found objects, I’m quite taken by the happy instance of a great shadow or compelling reflection, and my camera is always at the ready. The long winter and summer shadows of early morning and evening present intriguing elongations. Rain puddles yield great reflections, often showing great depth in a very shallow presence of water. And shop windows and car windows sometimes have fleeting magical reflections.

An art teacher in my freshman year said, “Find your obsession.”

This is it—objects and light and shadows.