Wood Series I-IV sanded wood or sanded wood, gesso, encaustic, and gel medium all approx 12x17
This is a series I'm working on for an upcoming group show at Linden Row Inn called The American Landscape. In the fall semester, I really started getting into sanded surfaces. In a piece I will post soon, I polished a gessoed canvas to a mirror finish. For some reason I enjoy the monotonous and repetitive process of refining a surface. When working with wood I find that there are countless mark making possibilities within the layers of plywood. This is nothing new. If you take a walk anywhere where there are exposed beds of sedimentary rock, you'll see the most amazing line work on the eroded surfaces. I had forgotten about that. For a long time, I haven't had an artistic outlet for my interest in geology, and I didn't want to force it. I wanted it to come about organically. And luckily for me it has. When I'm making these pieces I'm taken back to what I learned in my sedimentary and stratigraphy classes at William & Mary, my junior year field trip to Big Bend, Tx, Army desert training in the Mojave Desert in my active duty days, and, of course, my deployment overseas in the Middle East with the Virginia National Guard. And with those places in mind, these works (to me, at least) become as much about landscape, topography, and geology as they are about meat, skin, fat, fir, and various types of wounds. I also enjoy the optical properties some of them possess. By sanding them at certain angles, the skewed orientation of them hopefully creates a tension in the viewer. However skewed they may look, though, the outer dimensions of them are all at right angles. I wanted there to be a stabilizing counterpoint to the off-kilter quality that some of them exhibit. I will be making many more of these, and I'm excited to see how the series evolves as I experiment with scale and in the introduction of various mediums and wood types.
Here's the skinny on the show:
What: The American Landscape
Where: 100 East Franklin Street Richmond, VA (across the street from the Richmond Public Library)
When: January 18 - April 29; opening is February 1, 5-9pm
Who: Terry Brown, Janis Goodman, Joe Olney, Martha Saunders, Paul Thulin, and Randy Toy
For more info: http://www.1708gallery.org/education-and-outreach/satellite-exhibitions.php