For this fall I am interested in simplifying my overall ideas and figuring out how to distill ideas into separate bodies of work.
I have begun working on an installation using bangles, referring to my own history and place of reference in the world, to somehow visually represent in some way a the biological adaptation of skin color based on points on a geographical grid of longitude and latitudinal lines.
I will work on this as I continue to do my collage/paintings that will pertain more to the idea of mending the universal grid. Perhaps my mentor can help me to distill more succinctly regarding this work as well. Using color and grid-like formations, including weaving, darning and embroidery within it to reference this overall idea to mend a diversified environment.
One of the main questions I have is how do I convey these ideas in ways that are clear but also not being a slave to the idea. Flow and energy in a work is important to me. I feel most in my flow when I don’t overthink the work. So while I want my work to speak, I also want the freedom to create a visually beautiful and interesting thing.
So far I have two works happening in tandem. I tend to work like this comfortably and it seems I need to have both ways of working in materials. I collage primarily, use paint within it and I work in installation with paper. Both are so different but something I find that I need to do as I am sure one will not overtake the other in my practice. These different ways of working must feed my soul in some way and that won’t change but my approach to both and the outcome will change and that is what I want to progress in. I rarely have had time to create a sustained body of work and I would like to do that with my collage practice. I am hoping that this grows and larger in scale and more intense and fearless in color and choice of materials and mark.
This feeds the installations that I do in tandem. This particular installation is through the use of my mothers bangles that I am pasting over with kitakata paper and sewing each together at points on each bangle. They are beginning to be reminiscent of a cellular structure which is what I am going for since my concept has to do with biological adaptations based on menalocytes cells. The kitakata paper is reminiscent of “skin” , my skin, already but I will have to continue to think about how to make this more universal in a sense without being overt and I want to have fun with it. I don’t want to get too bogged down with concept that I lose a sense of freedom in the making of it. Overthinking paralyzes me.
I am intending for the installation to be large scale and hanging within an indoor context since it will be primarily paper and fiber based. Since it is made of bangles it can be configured and reconfigured in space, it can also hang on a wall. My large scale collage is now on canvas and will hang on a wall as well however I have done collages on kitakata and the transparency allows them to be installed as a hanging within a space as well. The one I am currently working on could be worked on both sides and that may be a possibility.