What I want you to know about this work and that it transformed the way I create as an artist. I stopped wanting to make work for a reaction and started making it for the conversation.
Tucked away in the east corner of campus is Kiehle Visual Arts Center. The printmaking room was a pass the gallery and a twirl up the stairs, first door to your left. Wide open windows that overlooked the Mississippi River. I had some of the best times in my life in the printmaking studio. Everything from gut wrenching critiques, art theory words of wisdom - professors choice of course (Thanks Justin! You gave us islands of our own understandings), grueling hours of artist statement rewrites and project grant reforms to ASU gatherings and all nighter parties. I wouldn't trade that time for anything.
The work begins with a plate and a chemical formula. I etched the lines and equations into the plates and used surface chemicals for morph the images. They are a conversation between the structural make up of this world and the organic form our reality lies in.
Once the conversation started, I want them to tell a story. To have the plates interact with each other, the growth in the petrie dish exposed in a tangible form.
My power figure. Embracing the light and opening herself to the world.
Found my new best friend...negative space.
You know that feeling you get in public places, like some one is watching you. It could be me, I'm definitely doodling you and people around you in a series of minute gestures. I start laughing aloud when I remember the blind contour. The main figure in these in a blind contour of an unusually round and grumpy boy at the airport.
A dear friend of mine took one of these prints and turn it into a book cover. It is a fantastic hand bound piece and inside... you guessed it... blind contours of people I have meet along the way and there efforts to attempt the task. I hope to publish the piece of one these years.
