Four Corners

These pieces started off as a quick exercise. I was looking at a recent etching collage called ‘Profiles’ and attempted to decipher one of the three overlapping faces. I drew four different versions with pen and ink. They were interesting exercises but I was more curious as to how they might be reinvented if I realigned them in my typical fashion. At first I cut the face in half laterally. They were similar to another series of portraits called ‘Bipolars.’ I decided to cut them into halves again so that each portrait would be separated into four square sections and then reassembled and completed with pen and ink. This series is called ‘Four Corners.’

I thought my etching collage days were over. But like every other time I say 'no' it turns out that there's always room for 'yes'. In this case I found a number of older etchings that were buried away and recently rediscovered. Typical of me is my tendency to see my past work with a contemporary eye. I saw the potential to once again build on the past and reinvent the pieces in the present.



















I decided to create portraits because the human face is both universal and immediate. As in all of my collages I organize seemingly incompatible scraps and remnants into recognizable arrangements. I used pen and ink, water color, or acrylic as a means to an end and played with elements of improvisation and spontaneity to make all the pieces fit together. As in all of my work, the results were a surprise.

Hard Edges

Portraits, self and selfless, present questions that may both reveal and conceal. They may be literal in their interpretations or ambiguous in nature. They may capture a likeness or merely approximate it in abstraction. Sometimes they bare little or no recognizable relationship to the subject and yet are imbued with an innate spirit. Some portraits are complex in their detail while others can capture the essence of a subject with a few strokes of a pen.

Almost all of my portraits, whether on canvas or paper, are imaginary and evolve gradually in a nonlinear process. I intentionally cut the work into incongruous parts and then reassemble unrelated bits and pieces into entirely new assemblages. Sometimes the results are representational. Other times they are more abstract.

Like the portraits, we as a people are the sum of many disparate parts, amalgams of those who preceded us. We are the results of unintentional confluences and unexpected social interactions. As an immigrant society we are a potpourri: a multi-ethnic, mutli-racial society whose strength is built on its dynamism and diversity. It is social cubism. There are so many different ways to see and evaluate how we perceive, identify, and define ourselves.

These are issues that color my point of view and my work:

How to take so many disconnected pieces and fit them together to create entirely

new identities.’

How to take so many different and sometimes incompatible parts and make them

whole.

And finally, how to make order from chaos and create something entirely new.

Portrait Parts

Portrait Parts, a set on Flickr.

The sum of many parts make up the whole. These drawings were created as different facial features were randomly organized to create some surprising results.

I was invited to paint a mural on a bath house at Olin Sang summer camp in Wisconsin called ‘Noah’s Ark.’ An older mural had been painted on one side of the building back in 2004, about 25 feet long and 8 feet high. My job was to create a new mural on the opposite side. But in actuality the mural was to encompass all four sides of the building.

All in all, painting ‘Noah’s Ark II’ was a very challenging but also an extremely gratifying and satisfying project. I loved the notion of starting it all off with nothing more than a pencil, a blank piece of paper, and an idea. But most importantly, without the kids’ drawings, imagination, and inspiration, the mural would not have come to be.

I was also pleased to be able to integrate and incorporate the new with the old. Although stylistically the two murals are adversely different from one another the lines of the ark in the original mural are aligned with the new one thereby unifying both boats. It also turns out that the two murals are almost seamlessly joined together where the rainbows meet, at the corner of the bath house. Finally, and probably the best part is that the two murals, old and new, have become one piece united. I guess that’s how it should be.