Tuesday, March 10, 2009

catalog images



The materials I choose for my art all carry associative meanings with memory and emotion. The wire, wood, ink and paint relate to places and periods of my life, I construct objects with them which help me to come to an understanding and resolution of past experience.

I use my art as a way to explore the conflicting psychological states which I associate with the places in which I exist. I show how my perception changes based upon the context in which I am considering it.

I am most interested in the extremes of meaning generated about place as experienced from contrasting emotional situations. I often turn to literature and to creative exchanges with writers as a means to find a different viewpoint in which to observe and evaluate my personal surroundings.


Nets, cages, home and thresholds are the symbolic language I use to express conflicting reactions to the experiences of my life. I hope that these images and structures allow others to recognize something in them that resonates with their own lives.



Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound –the tumultuous motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought – a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and successful effort to move.


- The Pit and the Pendulum (fragment) Edgar Allan Poe








My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart...

"Yes," I said to the little prince. "The house, the stars, the desert-- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!"
-The Little Prince (fragment) Antoine de Saint-Exupery


















In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia’s refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of the abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

- Invisible Cities (fragment) Italo Calvino (1972)



About 1/2 of these are faked because of the nature of what I am making. I will not have access to my installation sites until just before my thesis show. So for now the corners and floor and walls of my studio are turned into detail shots to approximate the finished work.

3 comments:

ScaughtFive said...

The wires are taut and stretched just over our heads. All our lives in the city the keep us pinned to the ground with countless telephone calls, flickering images that stun the mind and endless tides of pointless and disturbing information.

ScaughtFive said...

They, I mean THEY.

Love,
Us

Angel said...

And it's hard to even notice their existence until you are free of them.


I'm not sure if I'll be able to adjust back into that life. I spent most of the summer hiding under a tree in a park.