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I'm always able to make something new with tape, which is one of the reasons that I keep pushing it and working it. This piece in particular right here is some of my newer work. This is an attempt to make realistic human figures out of tape.
The last two years I've been focusing on garbage piles and at first it felt like really blighty. I was kind of upset that this was in my neighborhood all the time.
But then I started kind of appreciating these piles structurally. So that was going on and then separately I was working on this other project which was like these little drawings.
And then I started making like Xeroxes of these drawings to paint in. These were things I was going to make. This has nothing to do with trash. I was going to like sew these flags.
But when I Xeroxed them I had all these extra like you know when you Xerox something and it goes off the page. So then I had all these scraps left. And then I started cutting up the scraps.
And you know just like my pattern work I like to work really intricately so I'd spend like all this time cutting out these little tiny things. This is all hand cut.
And then I would glue them down and I was making these drawings of like other things I was going to make these sculptures. So this is all collaged on glued on paper.
And then they were sitting on my table in a pile and I thought wow this pile of paper looks a lot like these piles that I've been taking photos of.
So then I started like making Xeroxes of the piles and I thought wow that really does look like the piles. And so then this is kind of weird. I shrink it and then I project it and then I've been doing large paintings of these piles.
It's a long way to go to draw to paint a picture of a trash pile. It's a long process. But it's working for me and that's what I'm interested in doing right now.
Now I'd like to introduce you to one of the pieces which I work with, Jiayi Yang, is the Hiroshima series. And this is a series of what we call a sound visualization.
All those pictures they come from the same sound source which is the broadcasting by our present Truman when we drop the bombs at Hiroshima.
That is the traditional sound wave. And Jiayi and I develop a model to transform the two D's that sound wave forms into a 3D.
So for those patterns they are actually head on through the time axis.
My borrowed imagination series is a series where my daughter and I collaborate.
Like this orange painting my daughter and I collaborate on lines where I actually learn how lines are made in a two year old where she would scribble lines on a piece of paper like any two year old just learning to hold a pencil with.
And then I'll collect all of them and then I'll make Xerox copies of them.
And then I'll take a carbon copy and I'll copy the lines onto a canvas and I'll reorganize it into composition.
It's actually an incredibly rewarding experience and it's actually very complex as well because you're forcing yourself to do something that you have forgotten since you were two year old.
If you come here you'll be able to make something out of clay because I'm going to have material out for people to make something out of fire from them.
Then we can rack hood out in the kiln there every time.
I hang them on a door and I tape the door so it's put back in the same place every time.
And then the light is the same light every time as well.
Now I don't use one light because of the studio. There's a lot of different lights that I use that are going on at one time.
But the position of the article or whatever I'm drawing stays the same.
And this can be as long as three months.
I get to be the participant. I get to draw and I also get to be the audience.
So after a while the subject basically tells me what to do.
So I have this conversation and relationship with the work.
And even though it's not alive it still gives me a lot of information.
Trying to investigate the reason for colors or shape or movement or whatever it ends up being that I find interesting.
It just kind of comes out like just kind of whatever happens.
It's just the speed and spontaneity of working.
So right now I'm getting ready for a solo exhibition of my work at Axis Gallery.
It is loosely based on the Seven Deadly Sins and I've only got two and a half weeks to go and I'm still working.
Thank you.
