Carbon Copies

“Carbon Copies (Frances Whitehead)” is part of a larger series titled Sculpture from Other Sculptors’ Sculptures, an expanding group of works in which unwanted sculptures from other artists are transformed. In 2002, Frances did a residency at the European Ceramic Workcentre in which she glazed two toilet sets to symbolically measure the water level of the New Amsterdam Peil (NAP). After donating these unwanted sculptures to Keeley Haftner in 2016, Haftner moved to the Netherlands two years later, bringing them full circle. This serendipitous 40,075 km journey prompted Haftner to do the same residency nearly twenty years later, where she transformed the toilets into vessels that measure the carbon dioxide content of human breath as a form of symbolic offset.

Drawing representing the carbon footprint and process of the project, as well as a scale representation of 24 hours worth of CO2 breathed by a human, which would fill a sculpture one meter in diameter.

Below: process of producing Carbon Copies, including hand-crushing and milling the two toilets

Unwanted ceramic sculpture by artist Frances Whitehead, waste clay, ten minutes of breath from artist Keeley Haftner, gas cap_20.5 x 20.5 x 21.5 cm_2020-2021

Carbon Copy (Frances Whitehead) 01, 02 and 15, each also containing ten minutes of breath. Most of the sculptures created for this series were created using a 3D printer, and various quantities of donated waste clay or clay pulled from the clay traps at EKWC, in addition to Frances’ toilets. Working in this way allows endless experimentation, without creating waste from molds.