In its first nationwide call to Masters of Fine Art for proposals, Locust Projects hosted Christina Mesiti from Claremont Graduate University in California, whose installation titled Port is in the project room. In it, she uses the security patterns found inside envelopes to create four sculptures.

These patterns come in a variety of types: right angles, slight squiggles, parallel lines. Mesiti engages an interest in the flow of material, both real and aesthetic, and taps the oft-explored subject of transport and the inside-outness of travel and senses of security.

Three of the sculptures–each of them small triangularly geometric shapes, hang almost precipitously on small shelves. They’re tightly crafted and draw you in amongst the white space. The fourth sculpture is a large iteration of these, blown up 400% in both size and pattern. This bigger sculpture sits on a paper carpet of envelopes, which covers the entirety of the floor and has gone scuffed by sole and heel. There’s a hanging quilted panel of envelopes too.

One of the first thoughts to flicker in my mind was Emmett Moore’s High, Low, and in-between, a show held at Locust in 2012 and which was in fact this reviewer’s first art review. Moore’s was focused more on architectural motifs which utilize design to create simulations and distortions, while Mesiti is drawn to the object itself.

Port deals with the realness of the envelopes, as things with an everyday cultural cache, items with an indispensable function in our world but which are dispensed of quite freely. These wrappers for our bureaucratic paperwork needs and the occasional love letter then go on to grow mountains of trash. And, occasionally, works of art.