Vestments

Early in my work with discarded pianos, I wanted to create some characters that would interact with the piano in differing ways. I created four characters and costumes: Wash, Wake, Burn & Sing. Around this time, I was exploring expressions of grief, funeral rites and burial practices, including the religious vestments worn by priests.

As I positioned an upright piano on its back and began to view it as a body or a coffin in shape, I conceived of funeral rites: washing the body, waking the body, burning the body and singing of the body’s life. I created four distinct “humanist celebrants” to assist the piano (as a body) on its transformation from one thing to another.