My practice is rooted within history, time, and place and how the notions and sentiments attached to these words create a framework for the process of ascertaining distinct definitions for given moments, occurrences, and interactions through various types of mapping.
“Divots and Bumps” is a site specific series that focuses on the histories found in the past use of walls - whether it be a gallery, home or business. I use the divots, cracks or bumps created over time as starting points and obsessively circle them. This creates a flowing, layered and beautiful representation of the life of the wall. Not just its past use, in addition these drawing give a nod to the effort to erase the past and to the future that has yet to occur. These drawings are akin to a topographical map visually as well as theoretically in that they represent the layers in which things are built and obtain existence.
“Gold”, also a site specific series, draws from the past use of a given space in a similar way to “Divots and Bumps”. In these installations, I paint or gold leaf the mars and imperfections within a space to expose the nobility of these sublime “blemishes”. This creates a map similar to an area cartogram (a map in which some thematic mapping variable is substituted for land area). My thematic variable is the broken, unnoticed, and covered while the land area is the perfect, untouched space.
“Chasing the Sun” is another series in which I reference the ideas of mapping to create a two dimensional representation of time. I spend several hours (or days) in a space tracing the shadows that are created by the sun’s movement. This is a transient drawing, never to be repeated, solely defined by its surroundings within the moments of construction. This drawing becomes a sort of “conceptual metaphor” map used in cognitive linguistics that defines the understanding of one idea only within the terms of another.
In “Map Drawings” and “Peregrination”, I go straight to the classic map as my springboard for creating work.
“Map Drawings” is a series where I cut out parts of old or out of date maps (i.e. counties, states, boroughs). I then rearrange the road or water connections to create new “paths” of travel. Additionally, I trace these new “paths” (again with repetitive marks) in order to expose the subjective and overlapping complexity of “paths” taken in order to achieve a specific goal or destination. Maps are thought of as a set of instructions to find your way from one place to another. With cutting them and reforming them into nonsensical delineations covered in a confluence of lines, I am unveiling the ephemeral quality of constructed borders and destinations.
With my “Peregrination” series, I draw my inspiration from mapped patterns of movement by people, animals, viruses, etc. I then remove the defining words and keep the color codes, arrows, dashes, and outlines. Finally, I overlay these images on top of one another to create a new depiction full of places, movements and marks. This new map becomes a documentation of the many complexities found in any long journey to a purpose or meaning, with no singular occurrence or being defining the complexity of existence.
The “Wood Paintings” series goes back to the map again. But this time, it is a naturally created map formed by the wood grain from a given tree that, in turn, gets reformed when created into commercial sheets of plywood and veneer. Referencing the already present patterns created by the wood panel’s grain and expanding them into a convergence of time, space, place, being, and adaptation, I create a representation of the eternal scope of the “categories of being” in the true Aristotelian tradition.