PATRICIA D BURNS

    Patricia Burns creates sculptures and sculptural installations that are dynamic objects performing in space. The works have a precarious and at times anxious beauty meant to elicit a visceral response in the viewer. In recent sculptures Burns creates three dimensional drawings using buttons, beads and wire suspended from the ceiling, walls, canvas or attached to found objects. The button and bead pieces are individually threaded, creating a woven web of organized chaos through a labor intensive process. 

 

    Burns’s work using buttons and pony beads originated from friends and family gifting her the items from discarded materials they no longer wanted. She  weaves these buttons or beads materials with wire and incorporates other found materials into her sculptures and installations.

 

    In working with buttons and pony beads, Burns romanticizes the fetish of friendship and craft objects, taking one back to a time when one made bracelets for friends at summer camp. Burns transforms the craft materials usually assigned to women and girls and elevates it to contemporary art. Parts of the sculptures are assembled from construction or household leftovers. Burns is often thinking of gender dynamics in both her professional and personal life. The materials she chooses are a direct reflection of the ideas of “female” centric materiality and “male” materials and where does the boundary between home and work exist. 

 

    In site-specific installations, Burns suspends, hangs, leans and balances elements to create three-dimensional drawings, using the dimensions of the exhibition space as a frame. The materials roughly convey gestures and movements that are more  expansive than that of the physical body. They have a strangeness that invites closer inspection of the materiality. 

 

   In addition Burns experiments with photography as it relates to her sculptures. Burns draws inspiration from her time as a dancer and gymnast to create carefully choreographed compositions within her photographs. She considers the body another tool or sculpture to play with in space,  in some photographs directly inserting her body into photographs. In these works, the female body solidly melds with the cast-offs or construction materials; at times creating both abstract forms and comedic gesture. hroughout the work Burns is exploring the ideas of femininity and masculinity trying to find where they blend in material and form; searching for fluidity.