Sunday, September 6, 2009

The B&W Turn



Ojo Caliente



Source


Riley Switch



Candy Kitchen




Portable Cosmography
My work over the past few weeks has taken a turn to B&W and maps. Maps have appeared in my work off and on for as long as I have been making images. The turn towards black and white for me is about directness and allignment with my sketchbook. The continued choice of words as subject has to do with avoiding illustration of concepts that are on my mind and going direct to the word in itself. These images have been meditations, struggles , and even visual subversions of the words. This recent group with maps have also turned towards often using toponyms or place names as subject. I am placing and meditating on my connections to theses words and even the actual places. What names and places stick with me? Why? If the place name is not the subject, then a place on the map is related to the word used as subject. This is the case with "Portable Cosmography." Chaco Canyon is part of this map and is connected to the title "Portable Cosmography" by way of a paper I wrote, with the same title, about the social agency of B&W pottery design in the Chaco region of the ancient southwest.