IN THE STUDI0 (2019 - 2021) virtual studio visit click to view
HAVEN’T YOU HAD ENOUGH (2020) (2x) 25" x 19" cyanotype, french paper
In the hopes of doing something new in my drawing and print making practices, I started experimenting with cyanotype. Like photographs of my inner dialog; ink lines burned in by the sun. Years ago, I started making contour drawings completely blind with my non-dominant hand without source material. It has proven to be a very freeing exercise, a way to dump the last bits out of my brain before calling it a night. I never know what might come out, and though the majority just get scrapped, the process allows me to embrace chance and create subconscious abstractions.
UNCERTAIN FUTURE, INEVITABLE CHANGE (2020) 36” x 36” cyanotype, french paper, pva, board
Failure is an inevitable part of the cyanotype process. Instead of discarding my failures though, I turned them into hundreds of fragments to continue making work from. Trying to pick up the pieces and use them to find comfort. The pandemic and election heightened the unknown and exposed volatile natures. Since my studio practice is where I wrestle with questions, of course the uncertainty of the future is being reflected in the work. The end result is fragile, for it can and will change over it’s lifetime. Light. Dark. Love. Neglect. Time. All will have their effect.
LEFT OF THE GARDEN (2020) series of 10” x 8” ink on paper
When making these blind drawings, I rarely look at anything until the sketchbook is filled. Sometimes that can take weeks. It’s a lot like note taking . Get things down as they come. When you’re done, go back through and pull out the important parts. Then organize and determine their relationships. In the past I’ve made larger sets of these drawings, but COVID had me drawn to smaller relationships. The pairs above are examples. More intimate but still expressing a malleable narrative. There is a publication with all of these drawings now available.
PREFACE TO THE PAST (2021) 30” x 20” card pockets, adhesive, board
SOME TEMPTATION WE RESISTED (2021) 30” x 20” card pockets, adhesive, board
AS I REMEMBER IT (2021) 30” x 20” card pockets, adhesive, board
They all had their effect on these library card pockets. The dry adhesive, once stuck to the inside of a book, has a secret history to tell. Like a congregation of ghosts, each card holds the stories of patrons and marks of librarians. I’ve been thinking a lot about misinformation and the corrosive manipulations that have shifted our proximity to facts, each other, and our actual lived experience. The appeal is emotional and it limits our imagination of what’s possible. These pieces speak to that corrosion while inviting imagination. They were made as a part of a recent commission for a collector in Alabama based on work from 2016-17. All materials from Cabell Library and all titles from James Branch Cabell. Some Temptation… is now at Studio Two Three.
ALVIN’S DRY BONES (2021) 12" x 9" endpapers, card pockets, paper
BIG TEAM HOUSETOP (FRACTURED) (2020) 16” x 16” buckram, end papers, pva, paper, board
THE GLUTTONY OF TIME (2021) 30” x 20” endpapers, card pockets, board
I’ve made a lot of work from discarded library materials over the years. An occupational hazard. The first one here had been in the works for a while, I just never glued it down. The interplay of the different texts and textures tell a wonderfully absurd tale. The second was made from a stack of school library books I found at Diversity Thrift. There are generations of markings on the end papers and buckram. The perfect material for a quilt, I thought. It sold in Iridian Gallery’s Bling It Out Biennial Auction. The same buyer went on to purchase the third piece here, which contains materials from the late 1920s through the late 1970s. A non-linear representation of time.
LOOKING FOR ANSWERS CONCEALED WITH ELEGANT DICTION (2019-20) (2x) 28" x 28" endpapers, date due slips, card pockets, ink, adhesive, pva, board
This diptych's title merges two quotes from author James Branch Cabell. It is a reflection on the duality of information in our search for and construction of knowledge. On the left, you have personal interactions marked with stamps and ink, each with potential for ideas to bloom. It contains a thousand individual weak hand drawings on date due slips, cut out and overlapped, transforming the individual into the communal. A visualization of knowledge passing through time. On the right, you see the materials themselves marked by use and age: endpapers, date due slips, card pockets, and adhesives. It explores the relationship we have with the information sources themselves and the institutions that organize and preserve them. This piece was selected for the Homeward Bound Triennial at the Taubman Museum, which ran from 12/17/21 - 3/6/22. It also won Honorable Mention in the Artspace All Media Juried Exhibition, which ran from 3/25/22 - 4/16/22. The materials used in this work were discarded from James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University.
THE BIG SHIFT (2019-20) (2x) 28" x 28" endpapers, maps, receipts, punch cards, bookplates, date due slips, card pockets, ink, adhesive, pva, board
All the materials used in this diptych are from James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University. They were collected from floors and bins during the Big Shift, a process of repurposing and expanding library space through reshelving, storing, and withdrawing approximately 1.5 million volumes. This work visualizes that process and the evolution of information systems in general: analog and digital both providing similar information through progressively more complex organization and distribution. It also provides a snapshot of the history of the library as well as its materials, personnel, and users. Originally intended for an exhibition cancelled by the pandemic, the work was donated to the Library of Virginia Foundation and sold at auction to the University Librarian at Washington and Lee University.
GEOGRAPHIC DIVIDE (2019) 28” x 28” maps, date due slips, ink, pva, board
This piece visualizes of our fragmented relationship with geography. Americans lack of global and national awareness is embarrassing at best and dangerous at worst. A National Geographic survey on global politics and geography found that the total percent of correct responses from all US respondents was just 55%, considerably lower than much of the world. Another survey revealed that only one in three Americans would pass the U.S. citizenship test, even though the vast majority of immigrants who take it do. A people who don’t know their own history nor understand the world around them are lost. This piece sold to a collector in Memphis.
BEYOND BRICK AND MORTAR (2019) 28” x 28” catalog cards, notepad sheets, endpaper, pva, board
This piece was made from a box of materials I was given during my residency at Roanoke College. 98 catalog cards, 12 note pad sheets, and 1 end-paper. The notes are from the 1950s, written by Wallace C. Shields; a priest, doctor, and academic from the region. They cover his thoughts on patient care and death, as well as plans to go off to a training program. Dr. Fintel, for whom the Library is named, said the arts enhanced the college “beyond brick and mortar.” The library does this as well. This piece sold in an auction at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
QUADRANGLE PATHWAYS (2019) 24" x 24" buckram, book covers and pages, endpapers, date due slips, card pockets, board, graphite, pva
This piece was also made from discarded materials from Roanoke College’s Fintel Library. It now hangs there as a part of the permanent collection. The campus is interconnected by paved pathways that go through and around three quadrangles. Using graphite rubbings of the paver pattern on these pathways, I made templates to reconstruct it. Once the pathway was fabricated, I cut everything into strips and rearranged them into a series of squares to form a central quadrangle. The work responds to both the history of the college and the physicality of the campus.