Close the Door Before I Sleep — Tate Rockwell Lithgow

The House of Kip
2024
8.5” x 8.5” x 14” (length of chain not included)
steel, epoxy, new mexico flora, insulation foam, acyrlic, sand, lightbulb

Close the Door Before I Sleep is a series of interactive sculptural works that I refer to as “psychological architecture,” or externalized structures built of the mind. The work explores humanity’s cognitive relationship to architecture, upon which we project safety, grief, spirituality, remembrance, power, and so much more. This relationship is inextricable, even embedded linguistically such as the noun “complex,” which is defined in two applications–one to buildings, and the other to psychoanalysis. While we are most consciously aware of how the psyche affects our perception of phsyical structures, this work focuses on the verso–how physical structures affect the psyche and the way thought is “structured.” These sculptures are my memory, emotion, and thought, which take the form of architecture in my mind.

Annihilation
2023
4” x 4” x 6”
steel, canvas, house paint, pre-printed cotton fabric, new mexico honey locust, store-bought chainlink, wire, ponderosa pine

Teshuvah
2023
36” x 36” x 90”
steel, canvas, acyrlic, house paint, plaster, new mexico honey locust, tumbleweed, bramble, wood, steel hardware

Symphony no. 5 in C-Sharp Minor: IV. Adagietto
2024
8” x 13.5” x 14”
steel, tissue paper, latex, acrylic, wax, flame, jewelry chain, new mexico honey locust

The Fish in the Percolator
2023
17” x 17” x 30”
steel, canvas, charred wood, acrylic, acrylic dye, childhood blanket, latex, new mexico honey locust