What is my work about?
Weaving and painting are two kinds of binding: the warp to the weft, the image to the object. Making is a form of storytelling. It?s a series of events and circumstances, arising from a sea of infinitely unknowable events and circumstances, being ordered into a particular meaning. The logic intertwines, it contradicts. The distinctions are directions; they are syncopated memories of something whole.
A line of stitches forms a connection and a boundary. A rope is a collected tension. Painted surfaces describe space; woven surfaces describe time. Each process is an expression of the materiality of meaning, a reflection of the physical experience of the passing of time. The forms emerge from the process, like a body that grows from the DNA of a single thread. They are collective expressions of the fracturing of reality, the movement from one to many, from many to one.
Artist Statement
I make the thing I want to see. I want it to be bigger than myself. My work is allegorical in that it attempts to make meaning out of information that is essentially random. Geometry is a kind of grammar, process is a kind of syntax. Logic is pervasive, it fails, and it persists. The language breaks down into isolated moments. Meaning rises in the fragments of touch, as isolated expressions of desire, loss, joy or solace, divorced from their broader circumstances. In this sense, these moments are expressions of grace, existing apart from the larger narrative, wholly for their own sake. Still, from a distance the work appears whole. There is a moral to the story flickering on the horizon. I can feel it in the shift of scale, the difference between the tiny threads two inches from my face and the breadth of the forms that stretch just wider than my reach.
My shapes come from the loom. It’s not the abstract grid, it’s a constructed surface. A triangle represents a kind of function, like strength, speed, conservation, direction. A slack rope falls into a loop, an arch presses upward; these shapes are structures that communicate their circumstances. Their meaning is physical. They demonstrate the way energy is expressed and transferred. It comes from a structural logic, but it’s symbolic as well. The conflation of the physical construction and image make space for both.
I make lots of small drawings before I start a piece. Using line helps me think of construction and image simultaneously, like a map. Translating between a very limited vocabulary and a wide array of processes and materials incites a generative fluctuation between openness and specificity. The more drawings I make, the more processes and images emerge, the same way translating a text from one language to another necessitates an inevitable expansion of meaning.
Right now I am making multiple pieces from the same basic compositional structure. I start with a zig-zag line that runs from top to bottom, forming two symmetrical peaks side by side. The form suggests an infinite system, a constant flux between the top and bottom halves of the image. Each piece accounts differently for this imbalance. I change the direction of a line, or make a cut instead of a rope, the same shape can deepen in once piece and confront in another. Each decision acts as a bridge between the desire for singularity and the constant inevitable change. The icon persists, and expands.
I want to make tangible the inadequacies of logic. I want to see the infinite space between the closest of things. I want to feel stillness within the endless relative unfolding. The same story is told again and again, but from a different distance, with a different taste. When I see the works together, they speak to each other like old lovers, recalling memories that are simultaneously intertwined and isolated, shared and possessed.
CV
EDUCATION
2013
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
2012
MFA, Yale University New Haven, CT (Painting and Printmaking)
2008
BFA Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI, (Painting)
EXHIBITIONS
2014
Hard as You Can, Right at the Middle, Asya Geisberg Gallery New York, NY
Equations of Sight-Similarity, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY
Painting Wall (Janus at 8:16), Touch Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2013
Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Industry City, New York, NY
Breaking Night, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
2012
Don’t Take Me Back, Second Guest Projects, New York, NY
Deep Cuts, Anna Kustera Gallery, New York, NY
No Longer Presidents, but Profits, Delicious Spectacle, Washington DC
Centaurs and Satyrs, Asya Geisbergy Gallery, New York, NY
Eyes Off The Flag, Motus Fort, Tokyo, Japan
Yale MFA Thesis Exhibition/Green Gallery, New Haven, CT
2009
What’s It Mean Love To You? Boujeloud, The World Sacred Music Festival, Fez, Morocco (s)
2008
Clop Shit Clop: Paintings of Paintings, Big Car Gallery Indianapolis, IN
AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES
2014
Woodstock Byrdcliff Artist Residency (supported by The Pollock Krasner Foundation)
2013
Yaddo Artist Residency
2012
Carol Scholsberg Memorial Prize for Excellence in Painting, Yale University
2008
Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust Travel Fellowship, RISD
Florence Leif Award for Excellence in Painting, RISD
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hedayya, Mostafa, ”10 Artists to Watch from Bushwick Open Studios”, Hyperallergic, Jun. 2014
“Goings on About Town: Art, Equations of Sight-Similarity”, The New Yorker, Feb. 2014
Duray, Dan. ”Twelve Things to Do in New York’s Art World Before Jan 13”, The New York Observer, GalleristNy, Jan. 2014
”Equations of Sight-Similarity at On Stellar Rays, New York”, Mousse Magazine, Jan. 2013
Surface, Susan. “Textiles, Texture and Paint at 1717 Troutman”, Arts In Bushwick, Jun. 2012
Joy, Christopher. Keeting, Zachary. Gorky’s Granddaughter, Artist Interview, Oct. 2012/Fisher, Jane. “Not Your Grandmother’s Art Show”, Out of Order Magazine, Feb. 2012