We finally got a new mattress the other week. Like many couples of our generation, we have a small apartment with one bedroom, so we had no room and no use for the old mattress we were replacing. When we got it, it was the cheapest we could find, and of fairly poor quality — it was really always meant to be temporary. Once we finished unpacking the new mattress, making the bed, and, of course, testing it out, we rolled up the old one and bound it tight with some string. It was snowing, so we didn’t want to leave it outside. Instead, we leaned it up against the wall in a corner of our living room, where it sat rolled up for days. Gradually, the thought of getting rid of it became sadder and sadder to both of us. It was the first mattress we bought together, for the first apartment that we shared, and it made the trip from Montréal to Toronto with us when we moved. We had both developed a strange sort of attachment to it, like it was part of our little family, and part of our story together. We even started to refer to it as “her” for no particular reason. I guess we somehow started to empathize with this pile of fabric and foam we were suddenly casting aside after two and a half years of service.

‘Pet Objects’ seeks to re-imagine our relationships and stories with our household objects, amplifying the odd sensation that inanimate "things" just may, possibly, have a soul, or gender, or feelings.

While we largely take these items for granted for their functionality, or merely idolize their beauty and craft, this project aims to imbibe them with a sense of eroticism, curiosity, and humour, and in turn, tease out these qualities already latent in our domestic spaces.

The project is separated into three series: Hybrids, Vessels, and Multiples, each one initiated with the same five starting forms which were fabric-cast in plaster. On their own, these forms offered little opportunity to act as functional objects, but by 3D-scanning them to create digital models, we gained virtually unlimited control to manipulate their forms. The newly-created objects were then 3D-printed in plastic, coated in resin, and painted with pearlescent automotive paint.

Each of these three series explores a different strategy for offering some form of non-binary and empathetic engagement with their "owner" and with other objects: acceptance, containment, support, display, or hiding, ...or maybe all of these?