Unknown, and yet familiar
A new series has emerged, as it seems things often do for me, from materials left over from another process. At the moment, I’m up to my eyeballs in prototypes of a new concept, for which I am using 11″×11″ pieces of paper. Cutting these squares down from larger pieces of paper, I found myself with dozens of 4″ wide strips after the trimming work. So I decided to go ahead and chop those down to 4″×4″ squares, getting a sense that they’d be useful.
The 11″×11″ concept involves watercolor and ink. At the end of one painting session, I found myself with more leftover paint than I wanted to just discard, and quietly, the 4″×4″ papers presented themselves.
The marks and lines that came through in that spontaneous painting session are, I think, echoes of figures that first appeared to me during a drum-making ceremony I was fortunate to participate in last fall. We were creating drums with various animal skins: horse, elk, deer, etc. While the hides soaked in preparation for stretching, our guide, Marlene Menendez, invited us to write something on the interior of the drums’ wooden hoops.
Normally, an idea would come through with ease after such a prompt—I’d get a clear sense of an intention to incorporate in a project like this. Though I sat with it awhile, there were no words to latch onto. Still, the impulse to write was strong, so I picked up tools and let them flow intuitively across the surface of the hoop.
And so, the new Glyph-State series explores abstracted symbols and letterforms that are at once familiar and unknown. These deconstructed glyphs might originate in the future or in the past, and their meaning is, as of yet, unclear. Except in the sense that they establish a link between this moment in time, and others, in which one may have lived other lives, spoken different languages, and understood concepts that are currently obscured.
Summer Edit | Pen Project
Happy to be participating in this show at Pen Project, alongside ten other local artists. The show opens Saturday June 10th; if you’re in town, please stop by. I have several works in the show, including some from the Glyph-State series.
“Visiting artist” for a day
The Fountainhead Artists Open is an open studios event, which welcomes the public into over 300 artists studios across Miami-Dade County. Hosted annually in May, this event encourages people to engage with their local artist community.
The incredibly kind and talented artist Christina Petterssen offered me the use of her studio space at Bakehouse Arts Complex for the day so that I could participate in the Artists Open . I showed a mix of finalized pieces and works-in-progress; and had great engagement and conversations throughout the day.
Eye Candy
During a recent trip to México City, we had an opportunity to visit the gorgeous studio of artist Fernanda Saavedra, which is located in the upper floors of an 17th-century building in the city center. Her works are mostly paper-based, incorporating textile elements, drawings, and manipulation including rips, punctures and burning.