• lines & spaces, 2005-2009

    in early 2005, i began to translate a 12 page classical music score into actions towards the making of paintings, sculpture, drawings, sound works and a film. the entire body of work spanned nearly 4 years, ending in the middle of 2009.

    the basic parameters were simple – translate the notes into letters (a-g) and use the numerical equivalents to determine potential actions or decisions. each painting was based on one line of notes as they appeared across the page horizontally, using both bass and treble notes. most individual works (painting, sculpture, sound) used a similar determination in terms of number of notes; but a sculpture and a film used the complete note sequence, so that during their making i performed the entire score. most of the paintings involved between 60 and 200 notes, which determined 60 – 200 decisions in relation to the score while making the paintings. obviously, there were also numerous intuitive responses to the chance/score operations, as well as responding to what was going on in the painting as it was evolving.

    at its most basic, a=1, b=2, c=3… so that a could be one color, one minute of time on an area, a one inch line, one shape, etc. the translations shifted constantly within a single work, especially with the paintings, and there is no interest on my part in offering a decoding experience. the idea is to continually open up what the score can tell me in relation to performing it.

    the score, which i found in my grandmother’s garage when i was in high school, has 96 lines. my hope was to create a single work for every line, and thus playing the entire score in various different visual actions – and realizing them in different forms. these are not visualized music (i have never heard the piece), nor an attempt to capture sound in image. the works were birthed from an intimate engagement with a language i cannot read properly… the purpose was to create a situation of slow reading and expanded conversation with the source.

    along with the musical score, a number of other influences had their way with me as well, including a 2005 visit to corbusier’s chapel at ronchamp and rudolf steiner’s goetheanum, steiner’s his writings on architecture, a book on music at the paris exhibition of 1889, giuseppe terrangi’s danteum, alexander graham bell’s kites, myron stout’s writings, and alvaro siza’s serpentine gallery pavillion.

    this work spanned several solo exhibitions – two at susanne vielmetter LA projects, one at susanne vielmetter berlin projects, and one at studio la citta in verona italy, and a group of paintings, sculpture and sound were installed in a gallery at the museum of contemporary art in san diego for the 2007 exhibition soundwaves

  • paintings, 2009

  • paintings, 2007 - 2008

  • of frozen music and liquid architecture

  • quartet

  • music into mountains, 2007

  • four words for four hands (apples.mountains.over.frozen.)

    2006
    ink on clear 16mm film stock
    8 minutes, silent

  • paintings, 2005 - 2006

  • sculpture, 2005 - 2006

  • above the sand, flown and undone (levitation)

    sound/sculpture installation
    2005
    wood, acrylic, polyurethane, glue, audio gear, 6 channel audio work
    66" x 22" x 28"

  • finding words in notes

    finding words in notes

    sound/sculpture
    2006
    hand made quilt (sewn by my mother), wood, acrylic paint, polyurethane, audio equipment, stereo sound work
    30" x 60" x 12"