ecstasy of influence “Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.” -Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence I’ve been thinking more about the phenomenon of collective consciousness and the accumulation of knowledge over generations. In an earlier entry, I included a quote from Socrates, “[…] all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.” I believe it’s possible to acquire knowledge and access a history through physical interaction with an object or one’s surroundings. But I also feel that this experience often occurs within our subconscious where it is not directly accessible as “knowledge I have acquired today.” This is a mental space that is interesting to me as I think about the potential for my work to influence the way that people see the world around them - how seeing my installations/drawings/etc. could subtly change their future visual experiences. …And how this new way of seeing may be adopted by the larger community, becoming part of that collective knowledge/consciousness.

ecstasy of influence

“Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.”

-Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence

I’ve been thinking more about the phenomenon of collective consciousness and the accumulation of knowledge over generations. In an earlier entry, I included a quote from Socrates, “[…] all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.” I believe it’s possible to acquire knowledge and access a history through physical interaction with an object or one’s surroundings. But I also feel that this experience often occurs within our subconscious where it is not directly accessible as “knowledge I have acquired today.” This is a mental space that is interesting to me as I think about the potential for my work to influence the way that people see the world around them - how seeing my installations/drawings/etc. could subtly change their future visual experiences. …And how this new way of seeing may be adopted by the larger community, becoming part of that collective knowledge/consciousness.

akiki ikeuchi Sigh. While I love finding work that resonates with me visually and conceptually, sometimes a discovery is formally similar enough to what I am currently working on that it makes me stop and analyze where my work diverts - and it’s important to me that it does. In this case, my installations are more focused on perception and momentarily capturing pockets of light than they are about natural phenomena, Ikeuchi’s inspiration. They are also more minimalist in their design and not as reliant on architectural formulas. I have a couple new pieces along this vein that I’m working on and will be exhibiting over the next few weeks. I’m excited for the directions they’re each exploring - check my website for developments.
sailing stones These large stones travel without any human or animal influence. The cause is yet unknown, but it is suspected that certain ground conditions in combination with a strong, sustained wind may be instrumental. It takes years for these paths to develop (generally 3-4). To me, the rocks seem eerily anthropomorphic in their solitary travels across the expansive desert regions in which they are found. I love thinking about the agency of inert objects and forces that are not considered to be sentient. Though conscious thought isn’t part of the sailing stone phenomenon, there is still a negotiation of space and matter, a coordination between elements, and a resulting forged path.
katie lewis - accumulated numbness These are so magnetic to me. Visually, they are stunning. Accumulation and meticulous attention to detail always gets my attention. The biomorphic, spreading forms make the works slightly threatening, which brings me in and pushes me away over and over.
on beauty and being just “When we come upon beautiful things… they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space; or they form ‘ladders reaching toward the beauty of the world,’ or they lift us… letting the ground rotate beneath us several inches, so that when we land, we find we are standing in a different relation to the world than we were a moment before. It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our world. We willingly cede our ground to the thing that stands before us.” -Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just, 77 I still feel the need to defend the beautiful in my work, to “prove” that my engagement with it is not simply a masturbatory practice. In a recent discussion about my work, I was advised to see if i could “make something that breaks your own heart.” The statement resonates with me, as it is what I have been striving for. Something so unbearably pleasurable that you are forced to take only small glimpses or submit to a vulnerability that has the potential to change how you see, feel and think: that is what is truly beautiful. This is what I want my work to carry with it - the ability to alter a person’s core being, however slight the change may be.

on beauty and being just

“When we come upon beautiful things… they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space; or they form ‘ladders reaching toward the beauty of the world,’ or they lift us… letting the ground rotate beneath us several inches, so that when we land, we find we are standing in a different relation to the world than we were a moment before. It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our world. We willingly cede our ground to the thing that stands before us.”

-Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just, 77

I still feel the need to defend the beautiful in my work, to “prove” that my engagement with it is not simply a masturbatory practice. In a recent discussion about my work, I was advised to see if i could “make something that breaks your own heart.” The statement resonates with me, as it is what I have been striving for. Something so unbearably pleasurable that you are forced to take only small glimpses or submit to a vulnerability that has the potential to change how you see, feel and think: that is what is truly beautiful. This is what I want my work to carry with it - the ability to alter a person’s core being, however slight the change may be.

alaska/coast seismicity This marker on vellum drawing layers seismic data from the state of Alaska and the western coast of North, South and Central America. 
broken butterfly This is the work of Anne Ten Donkelaar. The butterfly’s disintegrating wings have been repaired with gold leaf. Other butterflies in Donkelaar’s oeuvre have been mended with thread and map fragments. I’m reminded of my early work that beautified the decay of natural objects. Fragility, beauty and decay are still present in my current projects but are expressed through more varied media. Thanks to Zoe for sharing - 
virginia woolf, “orlando” excerpt “But if sleep it was, of what nature, we can scarcely refrain from asking, are such sleeps as these? Are they remedial measures—trances in which the most galling memories, events that seem likely to cripple life for ever, are brushed with a dark wing which rubs their harshness off and gilds them, even the ugliest, and basest, with a lustre, an incandescence? Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?” I love that notion - that small deaths of ourselves, our memories, are necessary in order to continue being engaged in life. 

virginia woolf, “orlando” excerpt

“But if sleep it was, of what nature, we can scarcely refrain from asking, are such sleeps as these? Are they remedial measures—trances in which the most galling memories, events that seem likely to cripple life for ever, are brushed with a dark wing which rubs their harshness off and gilds them, even the ugliest, and basest, with a lustre, an incandescence? Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?”

I love that notion - that small deaths of ourselves, our memories, are necessary in order to continue being engaged in life. 

artist statement fall 2011 I am curious about the world – about its strange, unpredictable and often incomprehensible phenomena. It is this inquisitiveness inherent in looking that I explore in my drawings and installations. I work along a spectrum from invisibility to saturation through the layering of material, time and events. In drawings of seismic data spanning the past century, circles representing earthquakes lie on top of one another, creating a density of time and space in select locations and an absence of the same in others. To a similar end, the variable spacing of individual lines in the string installations allows the form to oscillate between solid, visible existence and the wavering edge of nothingness. My work is not intended to be didactic nor scientifically precise; consequently, I do not identify the referenced phenomena for the viewer. Rather, I make specific gestures in attempts to “figure something out” – to wrestle with concepts or events that are nearly unfathomable. I often enter the realm of the imagination as I divert from some grounding in the real (data sets, physical landmarks). It is this merging of the concrete and speculative, visible and invisible that I encourage the viewer to consider. The materials I employ are manipulated to transcend their original identities and become something foreign and arresting; this necessitates further, more deliberate investigation. My labor-intensive processes also facilitate a slowly unfolding experience. As I am engaged primarily with the act of looking, this time allows for more nuanced discoveries and thus is indispensable. 

artist statement fall 2011

I am curious about the world – about its strange, unpredictable and often incomprehensible phenomena. It is this inquisitiveness inherent in looking that I explore in my drawings and installations. I work along a spectrum from invisibility to saturation through the layering of material, time and events. In drawings of seismic data spanning the past century, circles representing earthquakes lie on top of one another, creating a density of time and space in select locations and an absence of the same in others. To a similar end, the variable spacing of individual lines in the string installations allows the form to oscillate between solid, visible existence and the wavering edge of nothingness.

My work is not intended to be didactic nor scientifically precise; consequently, I do not identify the referenced phenomena for the viewer. Rather, I make specific gestures in attempts to “figure something out” – to wrestle with concepts or events that are nearly unfathomable. I often enter the realm of the imagination as I divert from some grounding in the real (data sets, physical landmarks). It is this merging of the concrete and speculative, visible and invisible that I encourage the viewer to consider. The materials I employ are manipulated to transcend their original identities and become something foreign and arresting; this necessitates further, more deliberate investigation. My labor-intensive processes also facilitate a slowly unfolding experience. As I am engaged primarily with the act of looking, this time allows for more nuanced discoveries and thus is indispensable. 

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