Tag: Pavement Series

Thematic Arragnements

A-Space organize

View GALLERY HERE.

Preparing for the A-Space show–giving a lot of thought to how I want to organize it. My work tends to migrate toward these broad, thematic areas–I hope to make this clear in my arrangements. I want to help people see what I’m doing, without overcoded interpretations.

 CHROMATICS & INVERSIONS:
Color exercises: watercolor or acrylic in inverted pairs– tone and colors (dark to light, light to dark): hue to complimentary hue (opposites on color wheel). Playing with color, like musical variations on a canon.
CITYSCAPES:
A new series in progress: from Plein Air street sketches to finished work, acrylics, assemblages & other media. Only 3, maybe 4 finished so far, but will tape the sketches to the wall around them to show the relationships.
BROKEN PAVEMENT
Series in several mediums, drawing on patterns and textures of pavement and streets.
RHIZOMATICS! Cells, Maps, Words
The first art I got paid for was in a class on comparative embryology; Professor paid me for crow quill pen and inks–microscopic slides of chick embryos. This is a Series in several mediums, inspired by photos in an histology text book. Free renditions, patterns and lines of communication— in no way meant to be biologically accurate illustrations! There’s a visual affinity for me between these and MAPS, and WORDS.

ASSEMBLAGES

Arrangements of Found Things, street trash, dirt, broken glass—the detritus of Late Capitalism—discarded identities in search of new relationships.

FAERIE TREES

Human Arboreal Intercourse

 

I don’t work from an abstract concept of the theme… more something that develops from a primarily visual interest.
There may be crossovers for any of these.

Patterns/texture–revolutionary chaos

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“Bio Filters,” posted on DeviantArt,  speaks to my fascination with organic textures, which I’m coming to understand as a fascination with pattern: after all, texture in nature is but the sensuous expression of pattern, and discovering patterns–and combining them, combining them in antithetical (or should I say, incommensurate) combinations, plays an increasingly important role in my art. I think this is visible in 3 of my recent works:

#480

#481

and #482

…as well as my Pavement Series of last year, and all of my trash assemblages (we too, are ‘Nature,’ and all things we do and make, we do and make by Nature’s rules). I’ve only begun to see how this works with my acrylic paintings and larger larger pieces.

Pattern & structure are present in deterioration & decay. Entropy simplifies, but doesn’t destroy, structure. Political, social and economic structures become rigid, resisting change, stifling freedom. Visualizing decaying patterns becomes a psychological extension of a search for fissures in the borders, locations of breakdowns where new, generative patterns may begin to form. I think of my most abstract work as no less political than pieces with explicit “messages,” … and more truly subversive.

 

 

What we see beneath our feet…

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I’ve been doing pieces — riffs on broken pavement, streets and sidewalks. Last couple of days, one on those rubber paint cross walk markers on asphalt. I work on it. Think it’s finished. Walk down the street–see these patterns, and think–no, something here I need to add. Now, after my last session… I saw in it a suggestion of the WTC towers. There was nothing of this in mind while I was working, and it’s not overly obvious, but the suggestion was there, clearly pushing me in that direction even though I didn’t see it.
This is why I’m obsessed with pavement, street art… literally. Like poetry–when you describe one thing, and without conscience intention, find that you’ve described something else–something much more entangled in your psychic life and relationship to the world.
I pay extraordinary attention to the pavement, to what is beneath my feet when I walk. And I walk a lot. Several miles a day on a normal day. And many more on Street Medic runs, and other excursions. The patterns I see have the power of dreams for me–dreaming awake.
I think there will be many more of these to come.
I need a camera to be able to record them.. .both the streets & pavements, and the art I make too large to scan.