A little writing about the show.

Brigid's post about her work for An American Orifice was a good idea. Here is some writing I shared with the folks at Arttransponder with regard to my piece in the show.

One of the things I address in my work, which links to the grotesque, is the aesthetics of unfinished things, particularly architecture. (Unfinished things are open-ended and somewhat borderless, like the grotesque body) The way we inhabit buildings, which can be unfinished, repurposed, decaying, etc. is of interested to me, as are the formal properties of "low" materials such as construction materials. In my work, I try to place these materials in a state of "becoming" where they are neither raw material, nor are they fully assimilated into the structure of something larger. I find this mirrors the way we relate to large forms, like buildings, anyway: as an assemblage of parts and a conceptual whole at the same time.

In blocking the doorway at Arttransponder, I was interested in setting up a situation that is simultaneously inviting and frustrating. Inviting, I hope, because of the softness of the watercolor painting and tracing on the walls, the delicate, regular strips of wood, the desire to go and see the other side. Frustrating, on the other hand, because it is an obstacle, both to sight and to movement in the space. Things that are more conventionally grotesque operate in a similar way, both inviting and repelling us.

Finally, the word "grotesque" has its roots in the Italian for "grotto" and can be a synonym for what we usually call "Baroque," i.e. something that is heavily and fancifully ornamented. I find that decoration and ornamentation are often thought as secondary to form, and that the visual pleasure they afford is frequently criticized as frivolous. I believe, however, that changing the surface of something, decorating it, is an act of individual agency on a crucial everyday level. The power to change how one's world looks is important.