Keeley Haftner

"Tesselescence (Woven Photographs)" is a series of images created by cutting up unwanted photographs from the artist's childhood, and weaving them into a tumbling blocks pattern. Haftner often uses these artworks to fundraise in support of causes of personal political relevance, since they are conveniently-sized like postcards, and are thus easily and quickly delivered with minimal ecological impact.

Detail

Seen performed here: Carbon Copy (Frances Whitehead) 13, for the collection of the European Ceramic Work Centre.

Tesselescence (Woven Photographs) is a series of images created by cutting up unwanted photographs from the artist's childhood, and weaving them into a tumbling blocks pattern. Haftner often uses these artworks to fundraise in support of causes of personal political relevance, since they are conveniently-sized like postcards, and are thus easily and quickly delivered with minimal ecological impact.

“Rags Paper” is a series of handmade papers created by macerating waste fabrics and ‘couching’ them together using a decal box and hand-cut template. The resulting sheets have rag edges and organic geometries. For "Graph Paper (Campbell & Albers," waste linen from artist Tammi Campbell’s painting practice was used to create grid paper. Some pages were left blank, while others were drawn on using Anni Albers’ grid drawings as research for her woven textiles as prompts. These designs were overlaid into a tumbling blocks pattern, a symbolic and aesthetic grounding principal of Haftner’s practice. The paper was produced at De Middelste Molen (NL).

“Tesselescence” is a series which combines the concepts of “tessellation” (a two-dimensional pattern with a three-dimensional effect) and “obsolescence,” be it unintentional or planned. “Tesselescence (Garden Apartment Gallery)” uses the tumbling blocks tessellation pattern to create an installation for the Garden Apartment Gallery in three tones: the found overgrown garden (cropped), sod, and bird/butterfly-friendly seeds in open soil. After the winter, these perennial seeds, the grass, and the weeds will work to "rewild" the yard, transitioning the space from the strict geometry of this "anthropo-logical" pattern to a naturalized, ecologically-friendly urban garden. Made possible with generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Hyde Park Arts Center’s Artist Run Chicago Fund. Curated by Edra Soto at The Franklin Outdoor, and Marlene Krygowski of the Garden Apartment Gallery.

Material Biases is a series of condensed installations predicated on the idea that the word 'material' itself is a bias which implies that matter is 'for human use.' They are playful material discoveries used to experiment for new works in other series' without producing waste, or simply to play. The materials list comprehensively tracks the chemical composition of each sculpture, which has been made almost exclusively from waste materials.

"Tesselescence (Umbrellas)" is a series of artworks made from umbrellas collected during and after storms. Umbrellas have been a part of human history as far back as 1st century B.C. in the form of the parasol, and yet their technology has hardly improved in large part due to planned obsolescence in design. "Tesselescence (Umbrella Flag)" was made site-specifically for ART-IN-PLACE by Terrain Exhibitions (Chicago) during the 2020 lockdown, and was displayed in front of the artist’s home in The Hague where the House of Representatives, 111 embassies, and the International Criminal Court are also located. These particular umbrellas were collected from Chicago and the Netherlands. Half of the proceeds from work sold during the exhibition went to benefit the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund.

Tesselescence (Woven Paintings) is a series of works in which paintings produced during and shortly after my undergraduate degree (2010-2014) are woven together in a tumbling blocks pattern to produce new two-dimensional works. The pieces used are as follows: 16 paintings from the Before series (2010), 1 painting from the Time Spent series (2010), 4 paintings from the Porn Portraits series (2011), 3 paintings produced for an installation from the Waste Warrior Women of the Post-Saskatchewan Apocalypse series (2012), and 8 paintings from the Black Velvet Monochromes (2014) series.

Detail

“Bricks for Walls, Bricks for Windows" is part of a series titled “Sculpture from Other Sculptor’s Sculptures” series, an expanding group of artworks in which the unwanted sculpture of other sculptors is transformed into new work. For this iteration, waste ceramic donated from potters and sculptors also taking part in the Medalta Artist in Residence program was cast into bricks. Their work had to be crushed in order to combine it with local clay and brick grog from the historic I-XL factory, formerly Redcliff Pressed Brick Company. Each brick was embossed with either the word “WALL” or “WINDOW” to symbolically represent each artists’ preferred use for the brick in response to today's political and environmental situation (for example, a brick for a wall to improve society or divide it, or a brick for vandalism or revolution). Each brick was glazed in a tumbling blocks pattern using colours taken from the ceramic sculpture contained in the brick.

Once fired, these bricks were then used for a site-specific performance in the old brick kilns of I-XL, and on waste brick mounds around the factory. Actual bricks from I-XL were used alongside the artists' bricks to build a wall in the kiln (the historical method for closing the kiln when it was operational), and windows from Medicine Hat Hycroft Pottery were smashed on the mounds.

Detail

Installation shot for Galleryfill sculpture

"Galleryfill" is a permanent public installation commissioned by Third Space Gallery for Tin Can Beach in Saint John, New Brunswick. To produce the installation, unwanted artworks were collected from artists in the City of Saint John, and Chicago, Illinois. These works were used to produce an underground gallery installed to landfill standards by layering stones, sand, clay, leachate barriers and felt.

Black Box is a sculpture that mimics the conditions of industrial compost facility. Compostable 3D prints made from PLA (polylactic acid) – a common 3D-printing plastic derived from corn sugar through a fermentation process alleged to be compostable at an industrial scale - are installed inside the glass ‘terrarium’ throughout its display. Under the right conditions (high temperature, condensation, microbes) they may break down, but without such conditions they are similar to ordinary plastics. The sculpture is means to pseudo-scientifically probe the limits of this material, while investigating the poetics of decomposition

Decomposition consists of 3D prints of naturalistic objects made from discarded compostable beverage containers on a diffused light table. The cups were sourced from trashcans, washed, dried, shredded, and extruded as precise filament for 3D printing. After they are printed, the found inks on these waste plastics yield organic colours that make it difficult to locate their material origins.