The morning air was cool as I stepped onto the portal this morning, the sun was just coming up above Taos Mountain. But I suspect it will be another hot day, as it has been the last several days. I am in the process of photographing and inventorying work. I have completed two drawers in one flat file. I will begin the next drawer today. Thought it is a time consuming process, it is something I need to do, and have promised myself I will do. Even though what I really like to do, is create something else. I have set aside three works, I will work on again, and that's not too bad, considering I have probably added about 100 works to my inventory in the last couple of days.
The sun is up, and I will soon begin, as I take the photos of my work outside in full sun. I have tried every other way, bought expensive lights, and am never satisfied, but the sun works well for me.
As I photograph these works and add them to the inventory. I feel I am visiting "old friends." An artist told me once, "The work is like a map of time, the time it took to do it, and the memory of the time that we did it." That also goes with the idea that what we look at as "art," is just the by-product of the process, and a reminder of when we created the work, who we were, and what was going on in our lives.
I call this series Fragments. It is the idea behind the work that dictates the image that the artist creates. We do not experience the world, memory, or thought as a whole, but rather in bits, or fragments.
Art should be required to be new and give the viewer a different way of viewing the world. The images I create do not dictate what the viewer should think, but allows the viewer his own interior thoughts.
In this series Fragments, I am creating the composition with a random process on an implied grid, and the random addition of the diagonal line. These compositions are pure abstractions and have no reference to the material world, except for the element of color, which is carefully chosen from nature. I also consider the visual vibration of each color as it is laid randomly next to another. These works are related to one another because of form and the size of the forms within the compositions.
These works could be seen as pages of a diary or nature journal, and like poetry, one idea dissolves into another, and the series of work becomes a sequence of new images. Like each new day, forever changing. Each piece takes time to create and they also require time to be seen. In science, this is called the Heisenberg Principle, a phenomenon that asserts the act of observing alters the reality being observed. Because, the finished work is not preconceived, I feel anticipation and excitement, and because it is my experience there is the possibility the viewer will experience this at some level.
All of the works, except the fifth one, are created on oriental paper, made by Mr. Hosino, of Kiryu, Japan. He is a master paper maker, and his family has been making paper there since the Edo period. He guarantees his paper for one thousand years. I love to work on Mr. Hosino's paper, as he has already added his expert and loving craft to the work before I begin. A good place to start.
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