BY RICK DE YAMPERT

One of artist Carlie Trosclair’s architectural skins from DeLand’s historic Dutton House is hanging on bones in the Museum of Art – DeLand Downtown Galleries.

The New Orleans artist’s skin-and-bone terms may seem Frankenstein-ish — even creepy — given that the Dutton House, she said, was once a funeral home. However, watching Trosclair ply her art on a recent sunny day in the shadowy interiors of the 114-year-old dilapidated neoclassical mansion led to a different perspective.

As Trosclair peeled off the latex-rubber coating she had applied to the home’s winding staircase, creating what she calls an “architectural skin” that will be displayed on an armature she calls “bones,” Trosclair alternately appeared workmanlike, filled with childlike glee, and mystically entranced by her surroundings. Even in its current state of disrepair, the Dutton House exudes a kind of majesty for Trosclair.

DeLand residents Tyler Spore, Solomon Greene and Christopher Paul bought the property in March 2023, and have begun a major restoration effort.

“When I did the initial walk-through online of the Dutton House, I was like …,” Trosclair said, truncating her comment with a loud gasp. “There’s such a disconnect now with new architecture and the modern minimalist aesthetic. So, the craftsmanship of the Dutton House — the details of the fireplace, the medallions on the ceiling, the plaster work — was really exciting to see.”

Latex rubber is the medium for the 30-something Trosclair, who earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and her B.F.A. from Loyola University in New Orleans.

Her exhibition “all the lives we ever lived,” which runs through Sunday, April 6, includes her architectural skins from the staircase of an old St. Louis building, from a brick wall of an old factory-turned-museum in Massachusetts, and other human-made edifices and artifacts, including the fireplace of the Dutton House.

The exhibit also includes her latex castings from nature, such as a live oak from her residency in Knoxville, Tennessee, because for Trosclair “the idea of home is not just the built environment.”

Some of Trosclair’s works are readily discernible as architecture. Other works are abstract, even surreal, such as the expansive Chrysalis: Reflections on the Interstitial, which could pass as a sheikh’s chic, billowy desert tent, or Cobra, a casting from a New Orleans home that looks like the skin of some creature from the sci-fi movie Dune.

Growing up in the Big Easy with her electrician father exposed Trosclair to his many architectural projects. Still, she began her art studies immersed in painting, until a Loyola art professor took Trosclair’s class to field trips in New York and Houston.

“That really opened my eyes to the breadth of what contemporary art is,” Trosclair said. Soon, she said, “I started pulling my paintings off the wall, deconstructing the frame to create three-dimensional structures that I would wrap canvases around or suspend from the air.”

After grad school, Trosclair said, she began exploring “vacant buildings that I had permission to be in, and I would carve out wallpaper or these designs that mimicked detritus patterns, because I was like, ‘This looks like a flower so why is this less valuable because it’s becoming undone?’”

She began using paint, kind of like molding, until a sculptor friend suggested she use latex rubber in her artworks involving the surfaces of architecture and woodlands. Thus, Trosclair’s transformation from painting to “installation and sculptural art” was complete.

Trosclair’s skins have been featured in solo exhibitions at galleries and art centers in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, New Orleans and other U.S. cities. She has been an artist in residence in St. Louis, Santa Fe and elsewhere, and has received more than 20 grants and fellowships.

Trosclair’s residency at the Museum of Art – DeLand, two years in the making, came about when Martha Underriner, the museum’s curator of education, contacted her.

Underriner admired her work “because of its historic architecture, and she thought it would resonate with people in DeLand because of the old houses and renovations,” Trosclair said.

Underriner secured a grant for Trosclair’s residency, and arranged for the artist to create works inside the Dutton House.

Trosclair does not feel she is documenting old buildings, whether they are scheduled for renovations or fated to be left to the ravages of time.

“I think of it as I’m almost freezing a moment in time of the architecture’s history — but my goal is not to create a replica,” Trosclair said.

She was aghast during her early castings when she discovered wood, plaster and masonry bits, plus other debris, had become embedded in her latex skins as she peeled them from their sources. She quickly realized that serendipity had created nuance and color.

“I don’t want the surface to be clean by any means,” she said.

Trosclair compared her art to “the way that a snake sheds its skin — it’s representing a current iteration of its growing and shifting phase.”

The Museum of Art – DeLand Downtown Galleries are located at 100 N. Woodland Blvd.