Drawings made on asphalt roofing paper (tar paper) with metallic pigments. As if cut from a three-foot high strip of film, these 3 foot by six foot drawings have ragged edges, like an interrupted dream.
Visual and auditory hallucinations that occur during the period between sleeping and waking are known as "hypnopomp" or the "hypnopompic state". Often these hallucinatory dream images come to me whole at the moment of waking, and I go into the studio and draw them. Other times I begin by working into tar paper with solvents and metallic pigments; the images then emerge from erasure and reworking.
The smell of tar evokes for me the primeval ooze of the La Brea Tar Pits in my native Los Angeles, where dinosaur bones are still excavated. For me, this underground source of fossils, fuel and prehistory has always been analogous to the upwelling of images from the unconscious mind.
Tar is also a primeval petroleum product: the animals and objects floating in this darkened sea may be mutants, or endangered, or simply part of an environment that we don’t understand.
narcissus
Drawings made with coated silver on window glass. I developed this process of “drawing” in collaboration with a commercial mirror manufacturer.
I’m interested in the poetics of my own personal imagery offering an actual reflection to viewers, who then perceive themselves in my drawings. My images are also self-conscious: of body and mind, action and reaction, attraction and repulsion.
Panes of glass lean against the wall in groups, or rest on ledges mounted at different heights. Viewers perceive them as either blank glass, as grey and black drawings, or as mirrors – as themselves! – depending on the angle of view.
When we walk by a store window or a mirror, we catch glimpses of ourselves that are unexpected, uncomfortable, flattering, horrifying. We become self-conscious. In these drawings, the viewer’s reflection is elusive because little of the drawing’s surface is actually mirrored. Then there is that moment when viewers see their own reflection, do a mental double-take, and then go through the process of relating to their own image.
In my public work building water features, I have used the water’s reflection to mirror and complete artwork. Here, the viewer becomes part of the imagery, psychologically and physically.
chemistry is the emotion of matter
Ambiguous, perhaps ominous organisms float and hover on the page in transition, mutation, and transformation – portrayed in the sentient rigors of corrosion, decay, and metamorphosis. The viewer’s visceral response defines these beings as much as any intention of the artist.
These drawings are made with an electrically-charged stylus on a copper table. The burnt holes in paper combine to make line and volume; flame from a torch or material burned directly on the drawings adds color and shading. The drawing technique adds to the tension between beauty and pollution, delicacy and destruction.
installations
In the last ten years, I have worked with the emotional and psychological import of symbols, stories and uncommon materials, often using the metaphor of water, both as medium and subject. I use moving water in installations as well as the subject of drawings, prints and sculpture and as a metaphor for mutability, reflectivity, and unpredictability.
Painting on clear acetate with clear and white media results in a drawing projected on a wall without being able to tell what it is that throws the shadow. The installations FLOOD and VOLUME ONE (with Nola Avienne) use this method; imagery draws from disturbing forms of microscopic and aquatic life.
public work
After receiving a fellowship to study water features in ancient Rome, and their relationship to urban design and public art in Seattle, I designed and built three public water features in Washington State and California.
A design team project in conjunction with the Seattle Fire Department tells the story of a village saved by fire from destruction by water. An installation in a public park near the children's wading pool is activated by water: images appear when concrete is wet and disappear when it dries. In Carlsbad, California, a water feature in the courtyard of the regional library uses half-letters to spell out words that are completed by the water's reflection: a literal use of the metaphor of "reflecting" on what is read.
A school that specializes in graduate studies in psychology, Antioch University Seattle commissioned Hemisphere and Basin. It was designed to lend focus and serenity to the communal entry space.
In Lieu Exhibit Space
In Lieu Exhibit Space presents work by a group of artists who look for a greater outreach and presence in the local, national, and international art community beyond what each artist's gallery or exhibiting venue can provide. In Lieu curates, promotes and disseminates. See exhibition schedule on this site for upcoming events, and www.inlieu.org.