5. Deoptimization | Grinnell Library 2022
On view September 1 - 31, 2022
Laura Holmes McCarthy’s work explores emotional connectivity through tactile, functional objects. Her practice is the product of her personal history–a long career in digital media, a familial tradition of craft, and recovery from the experience of complicated grief in early adulthood–all of which inform her desire to create physical multi-generational pathways in a material culture increasingly defined by digital artifacts.
This body of work represents a purposefully slow and un-optimized way of working, counter to current cultural trends towards efficiency, friction reduction, and streamlined design. Surfaces bubble and drip, cultivating tactile awareness. Machine-inspired silhouettes shaped with hands create subtle imperfections that quietly speak to their human origins. Forms are built with intentional awkwardness–a too-small handle, a slumping spout, or an unevenly-weighted belly–forcing intentionality upon the people who use them. They possess a range of functionality, without ever becoming entirely dysfunctional.
