November 2, 2007

Detail of drawing #2

This is the 2nd drawing and it was completed in July (same scale).

I began by saving each filter I used every day. I flopped the filter onto a plate to loosen a majority of the grounds and then laid it flat. After I had a few I sprayed them with a glue/water solution and allowed them to dry. After the filters were stiff I analyzed them for pattern or symmetry or lack of. The first drawing occurred because I took effort to choose a filter that displayed a symmetrical residue. The filter was then xerox copied and made into a transparency to project onto paper. Black Sharpie was then used to record all of the positive space being projected. The positive space is comprised of small circular controlled movements of the pen touching the paper.

The second filter was chosen because it displayed some symmetry, but not as much as the first and was a little bit more wild and crazy. As I worked through it I didn't know how I felt about it. To me it felt like it had a mind of its own, all irregular on the edges and combusting in some areas, but I felt like that was o.k. because there was still some pattern there and maybe this is what happens next. I say "next" because I feel like they have a planet like feeling to them and originally I started to see them as different states of a planet breaking apart. But now other imagery comes to mind like brain tissue and island regions.

Oct.11, 2007

This drawing is of coffee grounds left on a filter after I have brewed a pot of coffee. It is pen and ink on paper and reaches 6' x 7' in dimensions. It was made in June of 2007.

Ever since I can remember coffee has been a familar smell of growing up. My mom was up by 5:00a.m., my dad shortly after, they sat at the table, drank coffee, talked and my dad took off for work. By the time we kids woke up the smell had wafed through the house.

As I remember it the actual first cup of coffee I ever had was in the afternoon and it had to be fall or winter because it was crummy outside. There was more sugar and milk in it then actual coffee. As I got to the bottom it was a surypy sweet sludge that slowly slid from the bottom of the cup to my lips.


I offer this bit of information as a fragment of what has made me- me.

I am interested in common everyday materials that experience use and are then discarded. These materials include coffee filters, sheets of lint, and erroded bars of soap and they are made by me. I am attracted to these materials because I think of them as accumulations of time. I am interested in how these household objects display a history specific to their making. They could be thought of as compilations of routine actions. For me, thinking about these mundane, used up obects as time instead of garbage makes them more precious.