Operating Conditions

Installing in March, 2026

Operating Conditions is an in situ sculpture composed of steel armatures and rawhide, positioned directly within the water so that the work is not placed onto the site but enters into it as a participant. The structure rises at two levels, neither fully arboreal nor strictly geometric, but branching in a way that suggests both delta and limb without resolving into either. It emerges from the water as if pushed upward by pressure from below, a form produced by forces rather than by image.

Current state of the Salton Sea water’s edge

The steel provides a skeletal logic: rings, lines, and supports that hold tension rather than mass. The rawhide is pierced onto this frame so that some sections gather while others are pulled taut. These are not decorative choices but structural conditions. Where the hide is gathered, it folds and channels water, producing pockets that collect rain and residue. Where it is stretched, it behaves like skin under strain, tightening as it dries and gradually shrinking. This shrinkage is not incidental; it exerts force back onto the steel, subtly bending the armature and recalibrating the sculpture’s geometry over time. The final form is therefore not fixed at installation but negotiated through material response.

Because the work is in situ, the rawhide is first soaked in the same waters it will inhabit. It absorbs salinity, algae, and suspended toxins. As it dries, these materials crystallize on and within the skin, leaving visible salt structures and residues that accumulate rather than being cleaned away. The sculpture does not represent contamination; it physically registers it. The hide becomes an index of what the water carries.

Some lengths of rawhide extend downward and reenter the water, creating a visible gradient between states: soaked and malleable below, desiccated and rigid above. This transition is slow and continuous. Viewers encounter the work at different moments in this cycle, never at a stable endpoint. The sculpture demonstrates how a material passes from flexibility to brittleness, from permeability to armor, without ever leaving its own substance.

The placement in the water also ties the sculpture to changing levels of the sea. As the shoreline recedes, more of the steel base becomes visible. The work gradually shifts from partially submerged to increasingly exposed, turning the sculpture into a quiet gauge of environmental change. It marks duration. It measures loss without announcing it.

Degradation is part of the structure. Sun, chemicals, and abrasion will thin the hide and alter its surface. This is not framed as failure but as continuation. The work holds the record of these interactions rather than resisting them. Environmental violence is not depicted symbolically; it is allowed to act on the same materials that stand in for bodies, membranes, and containers.