I work on the premise that "meaning" is going to be discovered through experimentation
with a variety of materials, processes within the pursuit of relevant ideas specific to my interests and world perspective.
Making work has the capacity to prompt realizations concerning the interrelationships of form and content spatially and culturally.
At issue, for me, is an evolving awareness concerning the dynamic development of landscape. Specifically, I am interested
in the impact of the automobile or fossil fuel consumption on nature and culture focusing on the intersections and co-existence of
both physical and psychological force visualizing balance and discord. The work can be literal and conceptual. Matter is often
revealed in terms of an artifact and a residue; a clash or juxtaposition of force and material represents human presence
on the landscape in the environment of suburban sprawl colliding with the rural environment. Geographical signifiers, innocuous
gestures or signature patterns of a brutal assault function as a kind of psychological demonstration of impact, at times.
Earlier work engaged the automobile as a drawing/painting instrument.
It is not unlike a staged performance. With the assistance of unsuspecting automobile drivers on the highway and (later) more
choreographed procedures, I have produced a series of works on paper and canvas. The signature mark of tire tracks identifies
the automobile as a kind of prosthesis or immediate extension of brute human presence. The use of gasoline and fire operates
as a euphemism for the proliferation of land clearing and development.
Investigations of skin damage,
amputation, regeneration and wound healing begin and continue with works like "Vista". The target can be perceived as a focused
point of masculine rationality. According to feminist geographer, Liz Mondi, geographers tend to see themselves as "detached
explorers" without acknowledging a context. The intersection of raw force and damage is part of the ambiguity concerning control
of nature and the resulting impact on social divisions. Opposition and a psychological distancing is revealed in an "acceptance
of autonomy being played out in contemporary landscape design and in the resulting spatial and human contexts of private spaces.
Public spaces, as we know it, are rapidly being transformed into differing versions of community. I think that this is related
to the diverse and social dynamics of domestic spatial definitions" of everyday occurrences and struggles for place or Identity.
(Gillian Rose. P. 37. Women and Everyday Spaces).
Further uses of heat and friction in the works on paper include "Burn"
which utilizes the slow process of decomposition of composted material with the aggressive function of fire to scorch and
augment the surface. The piece ended up feeling like animal hide stretched onto a wall like a trophy. Over a period of a wet
spring season, long strips of paper were allowed to weather beneath leaf material. The sediment of compost imprinted the details
of leaf structures veins and such or micro circulatory patterns. The next layer is torched and chased with water to move the
fire along.
The "Ground Control" installation visualizes suburban geography as a
series of condensed, segregated packages building on references I make on urban planning development - packaging and the geographic
compression of natural resources. Suburban structure with its network of subdivisions has created a car dependent culture.
The ways, in which humans build, shape and define communities, encourages a lifestyle of consumption. The relationship of
space design and social interaction is not as obvious. Planned communities, I contend, are more about class issues. A reconstitution
of land splits off into autonomous enclaves ranking population members. This ordering principle is a mask for sources of oppression,
exploitation and domination embedded deep into the American individualist psyche. It is an engineered construction about the
spatial distribution of social life.
A redistribution of wealth and resources from the city to the suburbs translates
into a restructuring of the 'faces of labor'. Who does what and where translates into questions about the way that land is
conceived and managed. "Subdivision" is developing work of thin transparent papers with onion skin images, waxes, gelatins
wrapped in dental floss clinging to a wall. Also, the Manhattan telephone directory compacted, waxed and wrapped in copper
wire contrasts population density with the homogeneous simulacra of representations of expanding Disney World themes, exclusive,
insular properties and anonymity. These pieces are bundles like filo dough or some kind of pastry - part fat and sugar representative
of an atmosphere of conspicuous consumption and generic sensibility. Confinement or the idea of pressing is significant about
oppressive social spaces. In the Politics of Paradoxical Space, Gillian Rose writes, ".....something pressed is something
caught between or among forces and barriers which are related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict, mold, immobilize
and reduce".
Subsequent works on paper and canvas use burned motor oil as a
foundation for the gesture of human presence i.e. The Monte Carlo Oil Suite, Uchronias, and "Pretty Pictures Lie". The new
series called "Blood and Oil" contemplates the seeping motion of the stain of fluids mixed with air or
as the poet, Claude Gudin, writes..."Il faut savoir humer l' humus
humide avec humilitie pour que lhumanite seveille en vous". (It's necessary to know how to breathe in the damp compost with humility so that
humanity awakens in you).
In conclusion: A nomadic or migratory behavior of humans can constitute
the term hypermodern world where the individual, naturally expects to experience an overabundance of events and spaces. Representation: In
order to continue to participate in the world we must be engaged in constant development, expansion and colonization of places
that will provide inclusive, meaningful, real and virtual experiences of mutual power and influence. "A big part of our knowledge
of the world around us is not simply based on our own experience, but on our expectation". (Jean Baudrillard).
copyright. 2000.
