In IDEA'L, torn, collaged and painted canvas covered with numerous carefully plotted holes allude to the cards fed through hand-crank machines in the Heilbrun & Pinner factories to yield various paper patterns. Cotts’s 'punch cards' are a vehicle to explore the idea of input rather than output. Cotts morphs what were effectively common mechanical instructional documents into seductive, hand-made repositories of idea and social exchange. The holes and torn canvas further function to highlight the notion of physical displacement and psychological loss. Named after specific factory locations, for example, Geiststrasse 21-22, each work signifies a collective longing to fill and understand gaps in one's
personal history.