Sarah Bliss

My work investigates the overlap and interplay between the worlds of industry, commerce, and the arts through exploring the dynamics of the built environment and systems of commercial, industrial, cultural, and social exchange.  I'm particularly interested in exposing the complete trajectory of material resource, and in making physical contact with the complex issues of management and disposal of objects and their packaging, along with their processing equipment and supplies.

The materiality of the object is of central importance in my work, and the materials I work with are chosen for both their associative meanings and their aesthetic potential.   I am particularly interested in the role of packaging as both a manipulator of consumer desire and a signifier of absence or not-having.  Likewise, I explore the nature of shipping materials (particularly shrink wrap and bubblewrap) as membranes that are considered valuable only in their ability to protect and contain the central objects of  value.  I investigate the reversal that happens when these materials shed their role as wrappers of other objects and instead lay full claim to their nature as the primary object of value.  In this exploration, qualities of inside/outside, reflectivity, and  presence/absence are particularly emphasized.