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Hothouse- CCA/Richard Levy Gallery

21 June 2008 in Articles

I haven’t written an artist statement per se, but thought I could lay out a description of my thoughts, processes and plans for the upcoming shows this summer…

I’ve “tried on” different subjects over the years, with each subject varying in it’s capacity to carry my ideas, or areas of interest. These cacti drawings continue my inquiry into the relationship between a natural and drawn world. Translating the natural world into line, immediately couches the natural world in human terms, and more specifically, in artistic terms. These drawings play with a variety of sympathies between a natural and drawn world, but also hold in dialectic many areas of my interest.

For example…

Why plants?

I am interested in plants because formally, they are complex subjects made up of many self-similar, but unique parts, which lend themselves to drawing without mechanical aid. Even though I am drawing directly into a computer, I am drawing “free-hand”. My hand can draw endlessly repeating forms, and a plant is comprised of endlessly repeating forms. There are no straight lines, and no part necessitates a slavish fidelity to a specific form. All leaves play to “type”.

Conceptionally, plants act as a convenient stand-in for the broader, natural world; a counterpart to the world of human-made things.

Why cacti?

The complexity of “many self-similar, but unique parts” in plants is even more apparent in cacti and succulents. I was attracted to their exotic, other-worldly forms. The cacti organize in ways that translate effortlessly into art-like compositions, bringing to mind all sorts of art historical references- such as Pollack’s all over compositions, Durer’s details, or Anna Atkins photograms.

The drawings begin with simple outlines of each plant form, but then hopefully multiply so voluminously, as to approach the complexity of nature. Cacti have more “line-like” parts than most plants, and therefore are inherently graphic.

Also, cacti are seen in courser caricature than most plants and trees, and therefore tie into my interest in “type”, “stand-in”, and “cliche”.

The Project…

I’m thinking of the CCA installation and the Richard Levy Gallery show as two parts to one show. The CCA component will be over 100’ of life-sized drawings of cacti and succulents drawn by hand, and then printed on different sheets of white butcher paper. The sheets will be cobbled together onto the walls to create a continuous drawing.

I treat the drawing as precious but the paper as not. (This, I hope, brings to mind that the drawing exists separately from the paper) At CCA, the drawings are going to be recycled at the end of the show.

For the Richard Levy show, I will print the CCA installation in miniature, in 5 to 7 framed drawings. These will be printed on Kozo paper, and reduce the large installation to a scale that is picture-like, framed, and sealed. These I hope will be an odd amalgam of a “western” subject (another reason for the cacti) , composed within a Eastern-like use of space, contrasting dense detail, with expanses of line that dissolve into the blankness of the paper.