BACK FROM THE BARDO; BEREAVEMENT
Artist Statement:
Back from the Bardo; Bereavement
I work out of necessity to articulate life’s complexity.
I have found reverie in the natural environment. I am sure it is the “waitingness” of it, as well as the “beckoning forth”, that allows me a safe haven. This natural environment is our home. The pace of it is slow, enduring, allowing space for vulnerability. Vulnerability and the intimacy created by this grace of space is the human condition.
We share loss. We are most vulnerable, at a loss for words. This current work reflects the time following loss of a number of family members. I was rendered raw, naked by the losses. The Bardo death, metaphorically is a space of time after loss when usual life activities become suspended. This altered state of reality is described thru visual, visceral images. Artists have explored “altered states” of reality for years. e.g. Nauman, Polke, have augmented their creative paths with hallucinogens. An altered state of reality is generative, transformative and unique; yet, a universal visual language can create a bridge for communication.
My camera is a sketchbook. A daily journaling of glimpses, barely audible sights that are not articulate to consciousness. Rather a flow of preconscious suggestions to inform with meaning at a later date. And objects found in my path become curious with memory when worked into my process. The intense physicality in nature; the shear will of it’s materials; a material will is what is most riveting.
In both sculpture/printmaking, the more process generates form, the more unique the work becomes. I seek this “integration of process with my feeling state” to find the intimacy of vulnerability. From this connection to a feeling state, the human condition becomes articulate. Hopefully the images reflect reverberations of transience, impermanence, transformation and degeneration. These reverberations create momentary clarity and connectedness in the continuum.