Fresh from my studio (basement): a pseudo-profound wall decoration fabricated (as always) from construction debris. The bricks were the product of a major Hudson Valley concern that closed in 1940 with the exhaustion of its clay deposits. In 1996, a mason whose name I cannot remember brought some to my house for use in repairs. He simply referred to them as “good bricks”. So, for over two decades these battered remainders of the heyday of American industrial might  — radiating near-toxic levels of inherent irony — have periodically resurfaced amongst my stored belongings in multiple residences. And after all that time and in the midst of a civilization-ending pandemic I elected to do something (incredibly trite) with them.

I made the worst mortar ever from gypsum, crushed limestone, and sawdust, but in fact the bricks are actually held in a plywood box by huge hidden gobs of industrial epoxy. The frame is scrap door casing left from one of my architecture projects, leafed with shellacked pseudo-gold  “Dutch metal” (brass). 

Normally, mortar would not react with brass this dramatically, but I used copper salts and a mild acid to emphasize the corrosiveness of whatever corrosive thing happens to be the subject.