I am a tree. An underwater tree.
They are clouds, of moon jellies perfectly buoyant,
floating in air.
Water is air.
(wall is aquarium)
Water planet... water stars,
Celestial ocean.
In these new works, I am exploring horizontality and bigness. A figure maker at my core (beings), I’ve always found the sideways a challenge:
‘Are they lying on the ground?’
‘No, they must float! As if caught mid-ascension.’
But now, I see them as clouds—gestalt landscapes contained within their own borders, demi-gods of the troposphere.
They have also begun to sprout eyes and stars — emerging similarly to light sensing dots on experimental brain organoids. They remind me of squid eyes, but without a face (more like potato eyes). The star is the negative space of four circles, a bauble, a dingbat decoration, and, of course, a Star — a bright circle that twinkles at a great distance (diffraction spikes).
As for color now, I’ve been working to develop a method for pigment dyeing at home without high heat or chemicals—to fully enmesh color within the material, creating something durable (and potentially even washable) while still using strong, lightfast pigments. I want color to exist as close to the grain as possible.
I am also beginning to see the work as ‘outfits that wear themselves,’ and the rules of garment coloration have slowly begun to wick their way into my book of statutes.
As always this collection of work remains uncontained—each piece an iteration of the last, a record of gradual evolution in a species of forms whose needs, desires and limitations dictate to me their own way forward.
