book of dots 02

The first project for Krzysztof's class dealt with the general body of interest I have, the idea of reality versus fantasy, constructing something real out the unreal, or constructing the unreal from the real. For the first six, seven weeks of the semester I started using a lot of diagrams, mind maps, correlations between what I was thinking of, what my project should be, I was more interested in the process of that whole experience rather than the actual product, the book of dots.

The physical experience, the book of dots, involves reading the book and seeing the pages. I can make a stop motion animation out of it—one thing Krzysztof suggested—that in itself is an experiential, rather than content based manifestation of the idea. But. it no longer relates to time, and we had that discussion. This is a physical abstract story of dots. Its not really about time, more like sequencing, more about presenting a very qualitative, tactile experience that people read, look at. They turn the pages, see the glossy dots, see the matte dots, see the cutouts. There is no narrative, its just about the form acting as a way of people to look at their own perception, learning how they see. A lot of my work used to deal with that, I am struggling with giving my work more content. That has been this whole semester, how do you add something to it that adds to it.

book of dots

As a response to various Harper’s Index facts, a project in Krzysztof Lenk’s class, I started studying reality versus fantasy, constructing something real out the unreal, and constructing the unreal from the real. Limiting myself to one size of stencil, playing with positive and negative paint over this stencil, and also limiting finishes to matt and gloss, white and black creates the vocabulary of expression to experiment with reconfiguration. The pages can be changed to create different counting configurations.

Investigating space through two dimensional sprayed patterns of dots plays with perception of foreground, middle ground, and background on a flat page. The white and black spray paint play in space to add depth and dimension to the flat page. Depending if the circles are in front or in back, they create shallow or deep space. Reinterpreting the surface allows te viewer to enter the space. The depth has negative space they can go into.

what las palmas mean

Pairing poetry words with photographic cyanotype images in a random narrative fashion created fragmented stores and new logical interpretations of my travels in the southwest. These panels document and frame the vernacular signs of route 66 against evocative words about palm trees.

The frame, the brush stoke, and the image are three disparate elements that are simultaneously existing on a non hierarchal page. They are not mixing or blending, but cut into the page landscape in a structured frame. The words of the poem are contrasted against the words of the sign. The 2D and 3D surface of the page—2D words and 3D photographs—is constructing flatness and depth.

palm desert

In this initial experimentation with cyanotypes, I used several double exposed Holga negatives of vernacular signs and desert horizons to construct layered pairings of place and context. Breaking up the image into structured frames allowed me to deconstruct the page into separate parts.