d-Structure

“d-Structure” is a new body of work that continues my exploration and interest in combining traditional media and digital technology.

After having finished my “Triptych Series (2003), I decided to further explore and push the second panel of the triptych: a photographic print mounted on aluminum that incorporated digitally scanned and manipulated imagery taken from earlier works on paper. I was motivated both by the interest of many viewers to this particular panel and by my own desire to further explore the process of scanning and digitally manipulating works on paper—a process which allows both the dynamically human nature of mark making and the flexibility and unique properties of digital technologies.

Wanting to both work large and draw from the growing body of graphite and acrylic work I was producing, I decided to “build” compositions by integrating work from seemingly unrelated and varied abstract pieces and printing them in a 40" x 46" format.

In the end, two distinct styles emerged: one style where the composition comprised different modular or vertical sections where proximity, color and line tied the composition together, and another which integrates various scans into a single image.

As I began working, I found these two approaches reminiscent of how the variety of information we encounter each day is combined and integrated to make sense of the world. In one scenario, information is discrete and seemingly unrelated: smelling coffee in the morning really has little to do with a great conversation with a co-worker, which has nothing to do with a traffic jam, which has nothing to do with a picturesque sunset. Yet all these disparate fragments make up a thing we call “a day.” And that day, by venture of its fragments has its own composition.

In the second scenario, information is edited, combined, and integrated internally; the composition represents that synthesis. Like many of our memories, we retain a gestalt and have little idea of specifics—e.g., we had a glorious time.