A.I.R. Gallery

Carolyn Boram-Hays

My inspiration comes from America’s crumbling post-industrial landscape. This fascination can be traced back to my childhood experiences with the super-industrialized environment of the east coast and Midwest of the United States. Driving through eastern Ohio to visit my grandparents, I watched factory after factory pass by the car window. These did not appear to me as simply, rigid, lifeless structures, but constructions that were brought to life by randomly flowing sculptural elements and layers of wear. Nevertheless, the relationship between these buildings and the communities in which they were located and the people that worked in them was not simply one of munificence. Instead, these were also the sites of industrial accidents and the source of pollution that left many individuals and communities harmed for lifetimes - even generations. Reflecting my profound ambivalence toward my industrialized heritage, I find this landscape patined with the residue of my ancestors yet tainted by a legacy of pollution and waste. They are places of both life and death, and tragedy and triumph. Working primarily in found metal and concrete, my work is meant to embody the unresolved nature of these environments, which exist between past and present, history and progress, industrialization and nature. With objects that inhabit the space between the documentary and metaphysical, I seek to create work that animates the essence of the spirits that haunt the detritus of a culture obsessed with consumption. It is my way of making peace with the post-industrial heritage that I have inherited.

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