Maloney: Creation and Destruction

At first I was puzzled how I might connect the dots between my artwork inspired by the urban landscape and my half-Italian heritage. However, after revisiting the photos I took on a family trip to Rome, Florence, and Tuscany in 2007, I realized that the passage of time and layers of history are themes that I go back to time and again.

In my work I often incorporate fragmented areas and voids that give way into receded areas of the pieces, as if the work is somewhere in the process of an archaeological excavation. Another recurring element in my work is the integration of scaffolding in and around the work. Scaffolding most often symbolizes a structure that is in the stages of creation but can also symbolize a structure that is in the process of being dismantled.

These themes of constant creation and destruction, as well as the layers of history embedded in the surface, are ones that I explore in my artwork but also associate with the memories of my visit to Italy.

The images are portraits drawn and painted in a traditional/digital hybrid that I then project digitally onto structures—some built, some found—that I then photograph and print out onto an image transfer film and transfer the image onto wood panels and assemble. (You might be wondering about the macaroni listed as part of the work. It was another way for me to tie the work to my Italian blood. The elbows of the pipes are pieces of elbow pasta that I cut down and glued to the wooden dowels to look like pipes. The rib connectors of the pipes are thin slivers of masking tape that I wrapped around several times to get a raised ring around the edge of the noodle—sounds like I'm talking in code here. Then I painted it to look like rusty metal.)