Walls
Evolved from drawings of ruins, these images started as small ink drawings of simplified rock walls, each stone measuring between half of an inch to an inch in diameter. Each stone was individually filled with watercolor, and loaded with water. The water and pigment would inadvertently cross the borders of each stone and invade it’s neighbor cell—an explosion would occur. As the explosions would ensue, the water would evaporate and leave a trace of what occurred. The walls were then scanned, detached, enlarged to a size similar to a snapshot, and then printed on Japanese paper. To me, each individual cell resembled a landscape—some of which resembled peaceful scenery, some of which were vacant and undamaged by the other cells, and some of which exposed the residue left after the crossing of borders. After each cell is printed, they become individual pieces, no longer parts of a wall. The delicate Japanese paper offers a tension or contradiction between the fragility of the paper and the mechanics of the scanned and printed image. These images could not be made by hand. Much like a photograph of war, they are documentation of the residue left after an occurrence of violence. I am interested in the explosions that occurred between pigment and water and how an image is captured as the water evaporates—leaving a trace—a remnant of destruction. I am also interested in how these uncontrolled images interact with the mechanics of digital print and the weakness of the paper.