Commerce/Economics - Liz Hickok - Social Critique

Liz Hickok- Creating Worlds

Commerce/Economics      Social Critique

by Ashley Doelger

San Francisco-based artist working in photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Her artwork has been exhibited across the country and is included in international collections. Her work is bright and exciting!

'Fugitive Topography: Cityscapes in Jell-O' has become a popular subject of media coverage, including popular magazines and national and local news and radio programs.

"I cast elaborate scale models of urban landmarks out of Jell-O, light them from below and bring them to life with photography and video. The molded shapes of the city blur into a jewel-like mosaic of luminous color and volume. Remade in an unexpected material, seemingly permanent architectural structures are transformed into something precarious and ephemeral. Their fragility quickly becomes a metaphor for the transitory nature of human artifacts.

I drew the inspiration for this project from my immediate surroundings in San Francisco, where the geological uncertainties of the landscape evoke uncanny parallels with the gelatinous material. Since beginning the series, I have been inspired by other urban and suburban sites with metaphorical possibilities, including the White House, Las Vegas and New York City.

I construct my own vision of these locations with props and backdrops as if they were small movie sets. I make the landscapes by constructing small balsa wood or foam core models of the architectural elements, which I then use to cast silicone molds. I also develop site-specific Jell-O installations that introduce the viewer to a more physical experience involving smell, movement and the desire to taste. Because the sculptures decay over time, the photographs and videos remain as the only record of their existence."

Marina Tidal Wave, 2006

In this video, produced from the San Francisco in Jell-O series, the Marina District is rattled by an earthquake and subsequent tidal wave. The Palace of Fine Arts and surrounding houses shake and become engulfed in a gelatinous flood. As the “water” subsides, the neighborhood melts away into a messy ooze. 

 
 

Molds and Model

"I turned my camera away from my sculptures of cityscapes in Jell-O to focus on the scale models, molds and props that I construct to make the sculptures. Both series speak to the complexity of the urban form and the mass production of our material environment.

In contrast to the glowing, saturated and chaotic Cityscapes in Jell-O series, these photographs are quiet, minimal and monochromatic. Their simplicity, along with the large scale of the prints, allows the viewer to observe the formal beauty of the objects as well as the signs of the artist’s hand.

The images provide a glimpse of the labor-intensive process involved in making the sculptures and the deceptively strange materials I use, such as balsa wood, silicone, rubber, foam core and feathers."