ABSU

04” x 53” x 54”

Woven glass fiber, epoxy resin, plaster and plaster bandages, 14” screen displaying smoke ritual, Frankincense & Myrrh incense, white magick candles, 3” casters, red, black & silver enamel paint, turntable, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane foam, pine plywood, oriented strand board, 500W bass amp head, four 12” 120 watt speakers wired in parallel, micro mixer, multiple ¼” cables, laser engraved steel and acrylic depicting medieval alchemical & memento mori imagery, LED’s, multiple red edison bulbs, fireglass, hand carved goblet which was then scanned and 3D resin printed.

𝔄𝔅𝔖𝔘 takes its name from the Sumerian deity and serves as an ode to the ways ancient mythology filtered into the imaginative universe of H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s work has shaped my practice for over seven years. While in graduate school in Providence, I frequented his former home and his gravesite; at one point, I even “blessed” one of my sculptures by placing it on his gravesite and documenting it. The name Absu appears throughout the Necronomicon—a fictional grimoire Lovecraft invented, which later writers adopted, expanded, and ultimately transformed into a text that now circulates as if it were an authentic occult manuscript. That slippage between fiction, belief, and material reality is a central force in my practice. I am in love with the idea that a plot device from the 1920s can become a contested, tangible object simply through collective insistence and repetition. I carry a similar conviction in my own work—if enough people believe in it, it becomes real in the world. The title also nods to Absu, the Dallas-based black metal band whose music mirrors the mythological and esoteric intensity of Lovecraft’s influence. Horror literature and extreme metal share a long, intertwined lineage, and both of those currents run strongly through this piece. Lastly, I wanted the work to bear a singular name because, as I built it, it began to feel personified. An effigy that my friends and I play to and through I wanted it to feel alive. and on opening night we play to the Abyss. Psalm 150:4 "Praise him with stringed instruments"