Edges Revisited
Ordinary objects, camouflaged by familiarity, blend into the background of everyday existence. Reproducing disposable items in permanent materials changes their character, allowing one to see them with fresh eyes.
Usually utilitarian and meant to be hidden, tape joins separate pieces, mends tears or is discarded after operating as a boundary for paint. In the Edges Revisited series, masking tape designs are used as transparencies for making lumen prints. Elevating this humble material from sideliner to main event parallels and reinterprets the still-life tradition. The use of simple tape can be seen as a metaphor for the fight to be heard, seen, valued and taken seriously.
Though tape is not an archival material, making marks and shapes with it is captivating. I welcome the challenge and forced ingenuity caused by not being able to use it directly in a final work of art. I also enjoy the absurdity of translating a simple process into something more complicated. It’s an example of “permanent ephemera” and my attraction to treating limitations as strengths.
My studio practice involves investigating the physical properties of materials. This exploration results in work that connects process and concept. Certain themes and ideas preoccupy me and, like a musician, I explore these motifs repeatedly with different instruments, styles and tonalities. Ideas that apply directly to this series:
Paradoxes
Mortality
Intersection of the Arts and Sciences
Experimenting and Collaborating With Tools and Materials, by:
Using my hands and senses to usher photograms through their magical journey from blank white paper to fixed image is satisfying and important to me. I value the craft of making unique gelatin silver photograms because it takes place outside of the digital realm and culminates in a marriage between creativity, materials, thought, action, aesthetics and science. By inventively and playfully using an old technique, I hope to arouse curiosity and delight, inspiring people to appreciate beauty in the quotidian.
Usually utilitarian and meant to be hidden, tape joins separate pieces, mends tears or is discarded after operating as a boundary for paint. In the Edges Revisited series, masking tape designs are used as transparencies for making lumen prints. Elevating this humble material from sideliner to main event parallels and reinterprets the still-life tradition. The use of simple tape can be seen as a metaphor for the fight to be heard, seen, valued and taken seriously.
Though tape is not an archival material, making marks and shapes with it is captivating. I welcome the challenge and forced ingenuity caused by not being able to use it directly in a final work of art. I also enjoy the absurdity of translating a simple process into something more complicated. It’s an example of “permanent ephemera” and my attraction to treating limitations as strengths.
My studio practice involves investigating the physical properties of materials. This exploration results in work that connects process and concept. Certain themes and ideas preoccupy me and, like a musician, I explore these motifs repeatedly with different instruments, styles and tonalities. Ideas that apply directly to this series:
Paradoxes
- Unified opposites:
Permanent ephemera, perfect imperfection (appreciating beneficial accidents and blemishes such as bleeding ink). - The creative liberation achieved by imposing limitations on materials and working methods.
- Substantiating the Invisible (for example: UV rays and time).
Mortality
- Capturing fleeting moments.
- Celebrating the ordinary.
Intersection of the Arts and Sciences
- Studio as research lab:
Documenting experimentation. Bringing a visual and conceptual work of art to realization by experimenting with materials and/or the opposite: experimenting with materials resulting in a conceptual work of art. - Observing natural forces, human behavior and their interactions with objects and environments:
Artist as cultural anthropologist. Choosing materials and subject matter because of how humans relate to them on an every-day level and using natural forces as tools (for example: sunlight). - Systems of logic and organization, archiving and/or distributing information, specimen display.
For example: studying, collecting and/or creating similar things whose differences become apparent only when grouped together (as in a field guide or museum display) so that one can compare them to each other.
Experimenting and Collaborating With Tools and Materials, by:
- Trying to stay in control while paradoxically also allowing them to surprise me.
- Using unusual substances and techniques.
- Achieving results influenced by how they react to each other and my involvement with them.
Using my hands and senses to usher photograms through their magical journey from blank white paper to fixed image is satisfying and important to me. I value the craft of making unique gelatin silver photograms because it takes place outside of the digital realm and culminates in a marriage between creativity, materials, thought, action, aesthetics and science. By inventively and playfully using an old technique, I hope to arouse curiosity and delight, inspiring people to appreciate beauty in the quotidian.