Surf and Turf, 2023

The title refers to a dish that combines seafood and meat, most commonly beef. The steel structure supports both blue mussels and red muscles as well as an industrial lamp, which is a stand-in for the transferral of both power and bio-energy between sea and land.

In Art And Energy, How Culture Changes, Barry Lord states, “Humans’ initial power is derived from the consumption of biomass converted into kinetic, muscle power. . . [F]rom the Horn of Africa around the coast of Arabia, India and Indonesia to Australia, then north along the Pacific shores to China, Korea, Japan, ultimately the Americas, and the other millennia-long overland trek through Sinai to the Levant, Mesopotamia and Central Asia, turning north or west, into Europe, or east and south into China – these global journeys of humanity were accomplished by human leg and arm muscle . . . The shellfish middens along the Korean coast are just one of the archaeological traces of this recurrent restlessness, with younger generations always pressing on to the next bay in search of fresh resources.”