Current Position
Assistant Professor, Printmaking. Arizona State University: Tempe, AZ
Website
http://art.asu.edu/
Email
Halfpennypress@aol.com
Year Fall 2005
Medium Bhutanese Paper, hand-drawn photo-litho, tea stained, edition variable
Statement and Intent
In existential mathematics, experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting. - excerpt from Slowness by Milan Kundera, 1996
For many years I worked with the idea of Silence as a state of mind; exploring the means of bringing order to chaos. In my work I sought to create a temporal environment for transcending into silence through artists' books, prints, paintings, drawings, sculptures, sound, and installation work. In the year 2000 my ideas turned to the abstract notion of Time, which, like Silence, is purely rhetorical rather than factual in its definition. Although the events of September 11, 2001 did not predicate the change in my work, they did have a powerful impact. For me Time stopped that day, and then it shifted, evidenced by the remarks of Daniel Shore, political commentator of National Public Radio, when he referred to our recent history as 9/11+1, 9/11+2, 9/11+3. This shift in our abstract notion of Time has become a primary focus in my studio work.
Cosmology tells us that Time exists in multiple planes, and what is called Imaginary Time is the vertical extension of Time, meandering infinitely into the 4th dimension. While the x, y, z axes are planes we can quantify through observation and mathematics, experienced Time exists purely in the abstract. My body of work, collectively called Concerning Time, is exploring how Time is experienced through a sequence of events. I do not personally perceive or experience Time as a linear phenomenon but rather as a series of events within events and cycles within cycles. And, not all of these cycles are moving at the same rate. The idea of visualizing Time is a concept I see as an empirical means of creating order over chaos, thus creating another sense of silence.
I soon realized that Time was visually eclipsing itself in my images. The darkness of the Into Black series spoke to me of contraction, of dark matter present in the atmosphere and of the time space continuum closing in upon itself. Time was not moving forward, but digressing into a past state of chaos. The current global climate of war, social and political inequality, occupation and conflicting interests and ideologies all sought refuge in this darkness. This suite of prints was conceived and executed on a very intuitive level, although through my working methodologies a structure did begin to emerge which sought to create order.
In the fall of 2005 I began painting 10,000 Tears, a project which is ongoing. I believe this action is an important tool to reflect upon, and perhaps, reach a level of understanding for the chaotic environmental, social and political global climate. 10,000 Tears is a project that seeks to explore a visual structure to what is often inexpressible with a language that is universal in its symbolism. This action led to a series of prints in which water is pooling, overflowing, diverting and escaping. The water in turn becomes the substance or source of reflection. In the printed images I etched each teardrop with my fingerprint to represent the humaneness of our current global theatre. My methodology has become a meditative action allowing me a vehicle of transcendence, albeit temporary. This means of transcendence is something I actively sought while working with Silence.