Chrissy P. Day

Christina P. Day let the natural path of her attention guide her process of collecting material, and was consistently surprised at what caught her eye and gave her pause. She compared the process of digging through the waste to reading a series of disparate short stories, all taking place in Philadelphia, and all now tangled together in the trash piles at Revolution Recovery. She found herself drawn to fractured patterns, unintentional pairs, and coincidental duplicates that tied these stories together. In the studio, Day found ways to highlight or to obscure the patterns and coincidences she discovered by adding to or subtracting from design motifs – by re-aligning broken parkay floor tiles for example, or re-tracing the floral pattern on gilded wallpaper with melted wax from a found candlestick, or scratching away the faux-marble relief on mirrored wall panels. By treasuring the details of waste objects and by slowly, carefully re-working them, Day renewed the value of dismissed and discarded objects, making (in her words) “broken material, dormant in its state, wake back up and blink.”