I’m pulling drawings out of storage and preparing for an upcoming project, and I realized I didn’t have a good photo of this piece—a crumpled paper drawing that’s 120″ long. For good reason: I had to clear half the studio to get it up, find a workable camera angle, and contend with a stubborn beam in the upper left corner. The light reflecting off the gold paint is nearly impossible to control—which, honestly, feels appropriate to the work—but I digress.
Now I finally have a photo I’m happy with (it’s not the one above that my lanky self is blocking! That is a photo of grouchy-me having re-pinned the damn thing a half dozen times and giving up on the corner lighting).
The piece is titled “working it out.” I don’t care so much for proper nouns with capital letters, as these experiments are meant to be like journal entries or a small semi-autonomous scribble, but if one spent several dozen hours working out that scribble. I made it in 2019, beginning by rubbing graphite onto my shoes and walking across the paper. Six years later, I’m still trying to understand what more embodied, experiential ways of artmaking might be. Less concerned with polished, pretty, frameable things (which I do like!) and more with what’s gooooiiiinnnng onnnnnn in heeeeeeerrrrrreeeee (puts hand on gut).
All that said, it does feels good to be back in dialogue with this work again.