nature’s will; MATERIAL WILL
Artist Statement:
Nature’s Will / Material Will
I have found reverie well as inspiration in the natural environment. I am sure it is the “waitingness” of it, as well as the “beckoning ” of it, that captures me. The intense physicality in nature; the shear will of it’s materials, a material will is what is most riveting.
In the photogravure process, I focus on how to accentuates the numinous quality of landscape. Trees with their digging into dark earth to grow, then reaching to catch the light, resonate their intent. The process releases the tree from real life so that it becomes something more boundless, a personal artiface.
The process of printmaking, the repetition of an image, allows me to concatenate ideas. Images are subsumed after many phases, the process is what I find most interesting and generative. In these etchings and collographs, I collected many tent caterpillar nests to create line and texture. These mundane, even repulsive nests, gave hundreds of random forms after drying them and flattening them to use for printing. These discarded remnants, ordinary and unremarkable, become transformed to lacey intricate webs. I found working an image through many phases, to evoke reverberations, the memory becomes palpable.
When working on sculpture, a material’s will and my decision making create a product reflecting the process of these two issues. I find working three dimensionally I have the most freedom, but also the most anxiety. I am forced by use of a material, urethane foam that moves from liquid to solid quickly, to keep very much in the moment, attentive to it’s movement. If I am not vigilant, the form slides from beauty into a sloppy mess.
These processes are purposeful, albeit mysterious, as nature’s purpose is allusive. I work to capture the emotional correlation, the resonance of primal forces in nature, in a personal form.
PRESS: Nature exhibit slated in Narrowsburg, Wayne Independent