Shane Rodems

Region: Midwest

Website: http://shanerodems.com/home.html

City / State: Champaign, IL

I read the Thrifty Nickel front to back, religiously. I seem to pick one up every time I see one. I love to find the advertisements that have lost their meaning, either by leaving out words or using too many initials or acronyms. Sentences are simplified into a jargon and by doing this, they make little sense. The kink in this communication is where I find a muse. My imagination runs wild when I read “42 pipe take all or none best offer.” Is it 42 pipes? Is it 42 inches? Should I offer two thousand dollars or fifty? I conjure an image of what these words could mean, and I make something in my head that relates to the words. I use common items like duct tape and house paint to pay tribute to the “slightly used” feeling of the want ads. The objects I make are placed over photographs to skew the line between what is physically real and what is an image. I want the work to mimic the confusion of language itself.