About Between 2 and 3 Dimensions

Between 2 and 3 Dimensions 2012-2016

In this series The Drawing May No Longer Be Accurate, I stress that climate change driven by human activity is assaulting natural and cultural boundaries as we know them. The series was prompted by warnings printed on maps of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, stating that the boundaries as depicted might be incorrect: we cannot be sure of information as it is presented to us because things in nature are changing constantly.

A strange and powerfully focused ambiguity permeates the work. Forms flicker back and forth between two- and three- dimensions demanding both renaming and repurposing as they shift. Are these paintings or sculpture. A large, flat rectangular piece of fly screen, with an open-gridded weave and no frame, hangs 12 inches out from the wall. This forms the basis of the majority of pieces in this series. As one approaches, one sees that paper pulp has been embedded in the gridded structure of the screen, forming marks that resemble pixels. It is these ‘pixels’ that perform the drawing act, revealing Earth’s air filled with polluting particles and a constant shift in the means used to represent objects. The lighting is such that the moving shadows spill out of the container of the screen and are caught and focused on the wall, making it hard to differentiate drawn from shadow forms. Added elements on the wall (such as metal arrows and multiple layers of cut details) attach to different parts of each structure, activating the three-dimensional life of this work. One is constantly reminded that recent technology places two-dimensional devices in our hands and that these devices take us elsewhere even as we continue to stand in the midst of a three-dimensional natural world. We are bombarded by multiple versions of life on earth as we ‘hangout’ in the thick of things that challenge accuracy. A wide arc of references holds these works wide open and alive to a multiplicity of interpretations that grow in and out of each other.