Statement

I use to play this game where I would say the same word over and over and over again until it no longer sounded like the original word and then I forgot how to say the original word and finally I forgot what the original word was. Almost any word works but some words work better than others. Once I started with the word FACETIOUS. Difficult. It only takes about three repetitions for the word to lose its character and its dignity.

My work exists in series. A number of related or similar things (either events or items) are arranged in, or occur in, a specific temporal, spatial, or other order.  Each series begins with a premise, a basis (stated or assumed) on which reasoning proceeds and also the series proceeds. Premises are rules and presuppositions that are proposed, set, and then ultimately proved wrong or tested to see how far they can be stretched and either still hold true or fail. The reason to propose a basis for an argument with the intent of coming to a conclusion is to

1. create a space (an area) provided for the particular purpose of inquiry,
2. construct boundaries for this space that indicate a border (or borders) or a limit (or limits) for investigation,
3. generate some type of architecture that provides structure (or at the very least a sense of structure) for the process of exploration, and
4. acknowledge a basis for  reasoning, allow that basis to be a given, and then understand that eventually the original given (premise) will be completely forgotten as the series progresses.

The premise for my current body of work was initially drawing.

A drawing is a noun, a physical object, and is traditionally regarded as a two-dimensional, flat entity. However, I realize that a drawing, no matter how thin the paper it is created on is, is still three-dimensional because paper has length and width and depth although the depth might be miniscule. The term drawing can also be extended to sculpture. Drawing, in terms of sculpture, is an underlying principle of order, cohesion, and tension within an object. It is an armature, either physically (a support mechanism) or metaphorically. The term drawing can also be seen as a means of organizing an object, or several objects, in space to form a composition in three-dimensions as opposed to the two-dimensions of a picture plane.

Drawing can also be a verb, an action. In this regard, drawing is the process of creating a picture with a series of marks. Usually drawing occurs on paper and does not involve color. Marks made can either be apparent (intentional) or hidden (purposefully concealed) and the result of each mark-making strategy is either the creation of an illusionistic space or else the opposite, anti-illusion.

When the physical touch of the artist is apparent, a sense of illusion is implied. The marks made, the personalities of the marks, and the illusion of space that results on account of these marks, are assumed to be elements of the artist's own private language. The impression of a space having been created is a precondition for the visibility of pictorial elements that appear within it. The space can be conceived of in different variations that include a perspective grid, an atmospheric landscape, or a picture that creates a sense of depth (like trompe l'oeil). It is assumed that the ground (the space) exists (or existed or was perceived by the artist) before figures came to exist within it.

This second type of drawing is about marking on the world instead of creating the illusion of a world through a series of marks. Here marks are stripped of metaphor. A certain mark does not stand in place of something else because of its appearance, the pressure used to make it, etc. and so marks are not symbols in the artist's own personal language. The resulting work is about material and surface. Marks coexist with the surface they are drawn upon and in most instances are generic. Since the drawing (the set of marks) is disengaged from the internal differentiations of a pictorial surface and instead exists on the exterior of a surface, the marks are detached from expression and from the private sphere of the artist.                      

When the metaphorical aspects of drawing are stripped away, the allusive qualities of edge and contour remain and everything structural becomes important. Allusion relates to language, gesture, something verbal (or non-verbal but related to the verbal). These references or implications can be either direct or indirect. Illusion, in contrast, is something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality. It involves sight, or the optical, but relates to the eye as well as perception, in relation to eyesight, as opposed to language. When the allusive qualities of edge, or contour, coincide exactly with the physical boundaries of the object, all aspects of illusionistic space disappear. When edge, surface, and/or both are eliminated, what occurs is flatness and this is the flatness of an object where the whole of the object amounts to the sum of its parts.