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Pass Through washi paper, printing ink, powdered charcoal, beeswax five panels, each 108” x 18” 2019 Pass Through is a site-responsive installation for an empty industrial space, 1100 Wicomico Street in Baltimore, Maryland. The building was originally the warehouse for “Baltimore Bargain House.” Built in 1915, the building has been in continual use for 106 years. Upon entering the space, the vast floor is what strikes the viewer. There is visible history marked, worn, and ground into the floor’s surface. Using a cast of the floor’s surface as a printing plate, each of the five panels of Pass Through is printed with the floor’s surface in chromatic black ink that diminishes as the brayer reaches the end of its roll. The history of this space as revealed by the floor is made vertical, for us vertical beings walking through the space. The verticality of the installation allows daylight from the window to illuminate the beeswax coated panels. The panels are suspended from the ceiling on an invisible line from a support column to a window. As the panels progress from the column to the window, the window’s effect becomes greater. Not only is there more illumination, but the placement of the image gradually moves from alignment with a vertical person’s sightline to alignment with the window. At the window, history yields to a view of the here and now, the buildings and neighborhoods that surround Wicomico Street in the present day. |