Chamber
The following text was written for the exhibition TELLING HERSTORY CREATING THE FUTURE on view March 4 - 28, 2019 in the 2nd floor lobby of the University of Rhode Island Feinstein Providence Campus.
The three dimensional art work Chamber (2018) consists of twenty-four 5 x 5 inch, double sided, acrylic, watercolor, and oil paintings resting on steel crura. Crus (plural: crura) refers to the elongated part of an anatomical structure, usually occurring in pairs, such as a leg. Here the painting components of Chamber are not only given a leg up to the height of the average American female but as paintings are given a leg to stand on, too. Together with their support structures, the paintings form a larger space which the viewer may enter into and journey back out of. Wandering through the nautilus-like chamber the face-level height of the paintings and the spaces between each enable the viewer to contemplate the paintings individually as segments as well as in their relationship to each other, their double-sided-ness, and the structure as a whole.
The multi-panel painting Black, White, and Blue (2018) is comprised of ten 11 x 14 inch acrylic and oil paintings on a paper-collage base, mounted on canvas boards. Each panel is derived from a systematic, responsive process. This process begins with a copy. Usually scanned and printed on paper, then through the process of cutting apart and collage-ing together, shapes are culled and re-grouped to create a ground upon which to respond. With the addition of layers of paint the copy regains a smattering of originality, becoming a fragment of a larger painting prior to becoming another simulacrum for subsequent generations of paintings which will emerge from the same creative process. While each of the panels could be taken individually they are intended as fragments of one larger painting. However, there is neither a pre-determined configuration for the panels place within the larger painting nor is the orientation - portrait or landscape - of each panel a given. This indeterminate configuration allows for the installation of this painting to be done in response to the space in which it will be viewed.