Date: Saturday, October 19
Address: 7129 Olive Blvd, University City, MO, 63130
Media: Installation, Sculpture, Time-based Media, Other
Studio Features: Restroom, Refreshments, Work For Sale
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar, The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs, installation view, 2018. Vinyl lettering, newspapers, furniture w/ embedded video. Courtesy of the artists. 
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar, The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs, installation view, 2018. Aluminum shelving, cast sugar, printed red tubing. Courtesy of the artists. 
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar, The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs, detail: Chamber of Chronicles, 2018. Aluminum shelving, cast sugar. Courtesy of the artists. 
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar, The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs, detail: The Cabinet of Unconsciousness, 2018. Wooden cubicle, found animal and plant specimens, slideshow. Courtesy of the artists. 
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar, Cleavemark Drive, closet detail, 2013. Wood frame, wooden spools, bath soap, thread, needles, framed embroidery. Courtesy of the artists. As a poet and installation artist, my work is preoccupied with the found and the sought. I investigate ideas of accumulation, both physically and metaphorically. In my poems, I am keenly concerned with the materiality of language—its origins, musicality, vernacular, and agendas. I borrow from disparate, unremarkable sources—news broadcasts, medical reports, movie dialogue, pop songs, scripture, overheard conversations. I strive to create a sound and diction that establishes an intimacy with the reader, one that’s familiar, if unplaceable.
In my visual work, I experiment with the off-label uses of everyday materials like pickling salt, soap, and sugar to transform the ordinary into talismanic and elegiac objects. I often work responsively, making written and visual ekphrastics inspired by daily encounters. In collaboration with the artist Cheryl Wassenaar, I create multi-media installations based on my poems, making what we think of as poems in space.
Our latest installation work with the poems in my manuscript, Well Waiting Room, which explores the politics of the mind through interior government ministers who preside over the cabinets of Self-Preservation, Desire, Lesser Offenses, Confrontations, Retribution, Misgivings, and many others. Like the poems, the installation tackles everyday indignations and global catastrophes.
