I was like, “Wait a minute. Didn’t we just see this headline? Was it a hundred people a day or was it a thousand people that died?” I couldn’t keep it straight. So I kept a log of a headline from each day. It was interesting how things cycled through. Where they would say, “You know if the numbers keep going up then by February, we’ll have this many deaths.” I was like, “Oh! I’m going to mark that! And I wanna see if in February do we have that many deaths.” And everything was spot on. Everything just kept cycling back. I thought it was interesting, it gave me something to do, it helped me feel like I wasn’t going crazy. … I’ve always liked making small hand-held things. I’ve never made huge- even though this looks and feels huge. Each one is little and individual. I like making small, hand-held items that can be arranged, put together, stacked, or piled, or hung to create something larger. I’m not trying to make a macho sculpture. I think the biggest sculpture I’ve ever made was that bear at the Cosmopolitan2. I like lots of little things. LEIANN SIERRA
Right and this is definitely a culmination of moments and events. I also do mosaics. This feels like a mosaic. Like putting little pieces together to tell a story. Now I’m looking at that citron color and thinking about that bear. I haven’t thought about that bear in years. If you squint your eyes that’s what the bear looks like.
² Slentz was an Artist in Residence at the Cosmopolitan’s P3 Studio in June 2013.