Above: Detail of a an original letter sent by UC Santa Barbara President David Pierpont Gardner to Ray Huerta (UCSB Affirmative Action Coordinator), January 8, 1990.
Office Staff of Life, Dust jackets, administrative ephemera, postcard, rubber stamps and rubber band recovered from UCSB Ethnic and Gender Studies Library, office supplies and desk, printed chiffon, 42” x 30.5” x 34”, 2024
Office Staff of Life and
File Cabinet Cloak of Visibility, 2024
Office Staff of Life and File Cabinet Cloak of Visibility are part of Dust Jackets, an ongoing body of work responding to the history of the Ethnic and Gender Studies Collections (EGSC) at University of California Santa Barbara’s Library.
The source materials incorporated into these sculptures were recovered from abandoned staff offices in the UCSB Ethnic and Gender Studies Collection whose remaining contents were slated to be discarded.
In both sculptures, fitted dust covers made of digitally printed chiffon fabric are draped over institutional office furniture including a wooden desk and a metal file cabinet; forms evocative of the office spaces where the source materials were originally found. The semi-transparent covers both obscure and reveal archival documents, office supplies and book dust jackets placed on the furniture and printed on the fabric.
Left: Office Staff of Life, Dust jackets, administrative ephemera, postcard, rubber stamps and rubber band recovered from UCSB Ethnic and Gender Studies Library, office supplies and desk, printed chiffon, 42” x 30.5” x 34”, 2024
Office Staff of Life, detail images
Left: File Cabinet Cloak of Visibility, Dust jackets and staff away signs from UCSB Ethnic and Gender Studies Library, file cabinet, file folders and plastic tabs, printed chiffon, 15” x 53” x 41”, 2024
File Cabinet Cloak of Visibility, detail images
All images by Kori Price