Eduardo J. Padron Campus - Art Gallery

Gallery Exhibition

360 Virtual Tour of Hybrid Detritus by Rod Faulds

Photographs of exhibit provided courtesy of Rod Faulds to Miami Dade College's Learning Resources Department.

Artist Information

Artist Website

https://www.rodfaulds.com/

Rod Faulds' Artist Statement (Fall/Winter 2021)

As an undergraduate art student, I made studio art employing photography and other graphic methods. The works I created then were influenced by recognized artists of the 1960s and 1970s whose use of photo-based images were expanding photographic art well beyond black and white “art photography.” Non-silver photographic techniques, using media images and a critical attitude about fashion and beauty were prevalent in my late 1970’s photo-based works.

In 2009, three decades into a career as a museum administrator, exhibition designer, curator and educator I began and have continued an earnest practice making images that employ photography and grid structures to make semi- and fully abstract works that are conceptually caught somewhere between photography and painting. The images I construct skirt between figuration and abstraction while retaining qualities inherent to photographic reproduction.

Most of my images are comprised of mundane man-made and/or natural subjects photographed from my daily surroundings in suburban and urban settings and travel destinations. Camera captured images are combined, repeated and mildly altered to emphasize and activate aspects of these unremarkable subjects. I like to think that my images evoke the sense that there are worlds beyond our pragmatic experience, there’s something hiding in the cracks, and/or I’m making something from existing matter that many consider to be nothing.

Working in a physical studio I produce two-dimensional collages using design, fashion and surfing images from magazines. Some of these collages have been scanned and combined with my camera images. In the studio I have also amassed a collection of “surplus” or trashed materials such as white boards, bulletin boards, maps and fabrics among other materials, many of which function as support surfaces. I also collect select materials from my daily life including metallic coffee bags, coffee stained Starbucks cups and clothes drier lint. These materials are combined to create larger scale collages/assemblages intended to be “wall coverings” as much as individual art works. When I can control the installation of my images in exhibition settings, I combine or hang the photo-based images over these larger wall coverings.

The use of these re-purposed materials in repetitive motifs to create a setting for my images integrates aspects of my experience as a graphic and exhibition designer as well as my interest in questioning distinctions between art, design and decoration. I am also interested in evolving definitions and classifications of obsolescent materials like trash, recyclables and surplus. While these materials might signify environmental concerns, my practice does not pretend to be helping the fight against climate change in any real way; rather, I hope viewers will be stimulated to question their personal roles in cycles of daily living and how individually and collectively change is needed in our habits of consumption, use and refuse.

A Brief Survey of Rod Faulds Photo-Based Art: 2010 through 2021

Promotional Exhibition Materials

MDC News Press Release