I bet all you ever thought was that I wanted to be a graffiti artist, right? Yes & No (“No” meaning: Major yes, but I’m too old & self-conscious to scale buildings to get a good throw-up…) I love doing my outdoor graffiti weavings; I love the idea of being able to tape up a loom anywhere and weave; but if I wanted to bring the outdoors in, how could I accomplish that? This was one of the goals I was trying to achieve with my exhibition at Sullivan Galleries, and my work going forward. I found some wood, welded some steel, and weaved in my pyjamas within the heated comfort of my own home.
Below is my statement for the show, and pretty much a statement of why I do my work. Most of it is because of Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher that was Freud’s nemesis…..
My work explores theories of the late French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze: becomings, multiplicities, lines of flight, and linguistics. My landscape guerilla weavings are an investigation of a constant life in motion; never in a place for more than a few hours to a week at a time due to either commuting for school, or away on work assignment. “By having this drive to weave into the landscape’s surface, I am leaving a bit of myself in that surrounding, essentially forcing myself into the site’s fabric, while trying to find solid ground in that location at that moment. Otherwise I feel ghostly, as if I don’t really belong anywhere; as if nobody would ever know where I had been.” Each type of work, whether indoors or not is a manifestation of Deleuze’s ideas of multiplicity and becomings- neither form a redundancy of each other.
Rhizome. Mixed Media, 6′ x 7′ x 8″, 2012
Rhizome: Everything happens in the middle. As soon as you place a label on an idea, the idea is dead. Creation/creativity/the formation of ideas happens in the middle, and can spawn multiplicities of itself, reaching out in different directions, seemingly limitless. Death is when an idea or thing has been given a label, its end points; it will then cease to grow. The grid, or the assemblage, is a weaving of multiplicities increasing in dimension as it expands, rhizomes bursting forth, generating a line of flight. Their evolution is an aparallel existence to each other, creating a map of the unconscious.
Pragmatics (I Love You). Mixed Media, 1.5′ x 1.5′ x 4″
Pragmatics (I Love You): This enunciation is in the form of a weaving which takes its visual shape from the words “I Love You” spoken and recorded. Linguistics closes language in on itself, creating boundaries that prohibit the growth of expression: constants (defining moments) to look for, rather than to grow from. Enunciation, or a pragmatic linguistic approach to communication, on the other hand not only sheds light on an external situation in which the words are spoken, but also an internal situation that can be spoken with just one word. The statement “I Love You” is perceived differently in different situations, and upon different people. By placing a label through a statement on an object or person, its perception has been changed, although the thing or person itself has not been altered. Likewise, the practice of linguistics categorizes language as a spoken and written on paper form of interpretation. Visual enunciation keeps linguistic categories and definitions open, an entirely different transformation of the spoken statement; a multiplicity of itself.
Along with the new works were digital photographs of Marsupial Bridge (Colour Theory), and Lake Michigan (Blue) to complete my ideas of finding everything in the middle…
PS: I’m now represented by Rosenthal Fine Art in Chicago
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