VISUAL & SOCIAL PRACTIce > DRAWINGS AND SCULPTURES 2013-2014
-
Jason A. Maas was a full time working artist until Hurricane Sandy flooded the first floor of his Red Hook, Brooklyn studio building in 2012. He joined the relief effort and was stationed out in the Rockaways for the next nine months running volunteer coordination, mucking & gutting homes, and cleaning mold. During this time, he developed systems to bring food to homebound residents, was invited by State Senators to share his first hand accounts at roundtable discussions, and created an outreach program that attracted over 100 college students a day to volunteer their time to gut out, muck out, and remove mold from flood ravaged homes. His experiences completely changed his relationship with his city and his artwork, creating the series below. His experience also led him to found a nonprofit, the Artist Volunteer Center, in 2013.
From an interview with New York Foundation for the Arts (January 2015):
I started collecting discarded materials from gutted homes. These materials felt like artifacts to me. I would bring them back to my studio and play around with them, ultimately incorporating them into installations. During this time, I completely departed from where I had been in the studio prior to the storm when I essentially had a two-dimensional drawing practice. The relief work I was doing introduced both new materials and new creative inspiration to my art. I found myself inspired by the protective gear we suited up hundreds of volunteers in a day, the city’s response (or in some cases, lack thereof) to the storm, the gut-wrenching need to demolish one’s own home and toss all personal possessions – subjects I encountered around me in the field each day. What happened after the storm completely changed my life and my art practice. It also made me recognize the need for artists to be offered support in order to get involved in their communities and make art about critical issues. This is how the Artist Volunteer Center was born.
-
Jason gutting his artwork
The body of work I developed after the storm [below] was completed when I symbolically threw the entire series away in a dumpster on the Red Hook waterfront, one of the sites of Sandy’s destruction. Letting go of the art I once held so precious was an act of solidarity with those who had to do the same after the storm.
-
He gutted his own home
Graphite, panel, salvaged Rockaway materials, custom designed mold-spore wallpaper
Dimensions variable (approx. 6’x4’x4”)
This is a before/after portrait of a man gutting his moldy home. In keeping with the themes of this body of work, the figure is removed and all that is drawn is his baseball cap. I designed the wallpaper using hi-res photos of mold spores, which I stamped into a fleur-de-lis pattern. Like wallpaper, mold covers the walls in colorful patterns. In rockaway, it rose to the five foot mark, where the waterline was. Using the drawing panel as a metaphor for a wall, I installed salvaged studs behind the gutted panel to evoke the skeleton of the home that was left behind.
-
-
Party House
salvaged record player cabinet, 110 records, shingles, speaker, graphite, oil, panel
Many of the bungalows in Rockaway were summer homes that became year-round residences. Homes that were destroyed were once places of joy, with gatherings and music. This sculptural combine presents a destroyed home music collection that evokes the gutted two story houses that proliferate the peninsula.
-
-
S.U.V. clean up
Graphite on paper 10"x26", Salvaged items from gas explosion site on Beach 114th St., 2013
This is a kinetic drawing; the paper balances on the sculpture and turns in the breeze or with a touch. The hands hover over the debris of items pulled from a block that was leveled for months by an explosion during the storm. S.U.V. is an abbreviation for "Spontaneous Unaffiliated Volunteer" meaning a person that comes to help alone, without the coordination of a group or organization. S.U.V.s made up a large portion of the volunteer-led clean up effort, and their help was invaluable.
-
-
Three Volunteers
Graphite, panel, salvaged Rockaway materials, fabric
Dimensions variable (approx. 7’x8’)
This is a portrait of three volunteers. Volunteers were always given the same "P.P.E" (Personal Protective Equipment). This entailed: gloves, respirator masks, goggles, tyvek suits, boots, cleaning equipment. What would often distinguish volunteers apart was what they were carrying.
*Note the use of bleach in this composition is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the failed policy that was initially touted by the City to instruct residents to remove mold. Bleach creates unsafe working conditions for the residents and workers, and was not more effective than many other options. Residents hoarded bleach after the storm because they were told to use it on mold. There were limits put on how many bottles residents could take at relief centers, and it was the most common item residents would fight over after electric heaters.
-
-
Endless palettes of water
Found wood, lumber, video still: “Human Chain” (movement #2 of “After The Storm: In Six Common
Movements”) continuous loop
36”x36”x12”
I rented out a video studio and created a "moving drawing" with actors on a green screen, removing everything except the clothing and recreated common scenes I saw over and over again in Rockaway. One of them was human chains of people moving thousands of cases of water from the back of trucks, trunks of cars, and forklifted palettes to relief centers for distribution to residents. I looped this particular movement on this found panel; I felt the construction orange perfectly evoked the vests of the volunteers.
-
-
Debris
Demolished drawing panel, salvaged materials, installed on side of the road in Red Hook
Dimensions variable (approx. 24”x36”)
This work is a portrait and remnant of possession. A drawing panel becomes a metaphor for a wall-- It is gutted and left in a pile with other materials that were put out for trash. Originally installed on the side of the road in Red Hook.
-
-
Red Hook
Sand and salvaged basket
Fairway, the destination supermarket, sits across from my studio at the end of Van Brunt St. on the waterfront in Red Hook. The entire contents of the store had to be carted out and thrown away as a result of taking on seven feet of water. I pulled this basket from the wreckage after the storm, and made it Sandy.
-
Brooklyn Industries modeling session
Salvaged skateboard & crown moulding, headphones, sunglasses. Dimensions variable, 2013
Brooklyn Industries went out to Rockway, Queens with a few models to shoot their summer collection in 2013. There, they decided pilings of the destroyed boardwalk among other ravaged landscapes to be the perfect backdrop for their waify model figurines to stand around and look stylish. I personally found this in very bad taste, and recreated the photoshoot myself, using a thin stiff plank that reminded me of a model, and skateboard I pulled from the trash. View the Brooklyn Industries photo shoot and decide for yourself.
-