Unheimliche (from Notes on the Uncanny series)
(spun and felted human hair, glass, clock. Dimensions variable)

The Uncanny:  (Ger. Das Unheimliche -- literally, "un-home-ly") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.

Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.

Unheimliche (detail)
(spun human hair, glass, knitting needles)

Ghost Identity (Notes on the Uncanny) (30" x 8" x 8")

Cast glass, human hair, wooden box, video projection)

(The video was created by pressing my face against a pane of glass, distorting my features. It was then projected from behind onto a cast glass image of my own face, creating the moving impression of trying to "fit" my features to themself.)

The state (uncanniness) is first identified by Ernst Jentsch in a 1906 essay, "On the Psychology of the Uncanny." Jentsch defines the uncanny as: "doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might be, in fact, animate"  and expands upon its use in fiction:

“ In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.

Dreamstates (from Notes on the Uncanny series) (84" x  5")
(spun human hair embroidered in artist's sleep EEG pattern, loose hair, wood, antique fishing reel)

Stretchmarks
(wax body casting suspended over mirror, heat lamp)

Stretchmarks (detail)

Pour
(glass, faucet. 24" height)

Dreamstates (detail)

Autopoesis
(crocheted copper wire, beeswax. 35" x 13" x 6")

Phantom Limb
(glass, latex skin, beeswax, projection of anatomical diagrams)