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This piece that I've donated is called "Spices."
It's a piece from 2007. I'm not sure if you can
see, but it a piece on paper and it's acrylic,
watercolor, pen, and ink.
And it's a really good piece, it's very representative of
my work because it's all about layers. I really feel that
two things that very much influence my life
are the decisions that I make every day and the relationships that I build.
And I think that that comes out in my work
as well as my professional life. Those are the two things that are always
steering me when I'm in the studio. So from a decision standpoint, it might be,
"Okay, how large of a piece of paper do I want to start?"
You know, the most basic. To then, "Alright, what color am I going to start with?"
"Do I have an overall sense of how I want this to be finished or is this piece
all about process?"
The relationships come in when I'm thinking about
the layers. You know, all of my work... with a background as a printmaker, all of my
work is about layers.
It's all about, "What am I going to start with?" and "What am I going to finish with?"
So if I've made a decision to lay down watercolor and that's my first process,
"What next do I want to add as another layer and is that going to have a
relationship?"
You know, in my...in my previous work as a printmaker, all of the work was really
flat. And as an artist
over about the last eight years, everything has kind of
started to float. So all of the work, it's really
open, it's loose, things are light. And that's something that has come
from stopping to make prints in the more traditional way.
of etching and woodcut, and just going to the press and printing and being done.
And it's really opened me up to make work that is more about the decisions.
Every decision I make, and then the relationships that those build. Some of what was on the back
seeped through
this piece. So when I flipped it over, which is really common when I'm
working with some of the rice papers
or watercolors that are really deep have
seeped through. It kind of provides the background that I start with.
So in some of the painting here, some of it is actually coming from the back
and that was my initial layer. And then for the next layer,
which is uncommon for me, I started with the mark making. And then the last thing that
I added was
these spices. I also just want to kind of highlight the name. Sometimes the titles
are really important because I go in with the idea, I know what the title's
going to be,
and so it just is that from the beginning and I pencil it on the back and
I say, you know,
"When it's done it'll be this." Sometimes it's like pulling a name out of a hat.
You know, so I looked at this one and I thought, "What does this remind me of?"
Something varied, something strong because all of these visual elements had a lot of
weight at the top. This piece actually started upside down.
And then I realized that it was too heavy, so immediately when I flipped it
over I thought, "Okay,
feels like spices, that's what the title's going to be."