ABOUT
Q&A, with Robert Tomlinson, Catskill Mountain Region Guide, August 2020
In a recent project, this is the work this machine does, I looked for local sources of energy, often in the form of environmental cyclic change, to animate the material on and related to the site. Interventions were often minimal, using well long-term & low-impact installations to collect data and generate interactions between process at play and various kinds of material. The mixed media work created sought to give autonomy to matter, and focused on the local alchemy of constant change at any given moment in the site as a source of both energy and material for the project. Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the two year exploration was completed in June, 2020 and the site is now closed.
From an industrial canal in Brooklyn to a recent project in the Mojave Desert, I work in a variety of materials and environments. My work employs the environmental specifics of the site itself as an active participant in the creation of the work. These material-rich interactions with the environment continue to be the root of my practice.
Mixed media work on canvas and paper from these process-driven and often durational installations become records and artifacts of vanished actions, while ongoing documentation, such as stop-animation and time-lapse of the unfolding work, often materializes the most ephemeral aspects of the work.
Working from an ontological premise of impermanence, my work charts how this truth manifests in both the absence and presence of materiality, prompting questions about how we interact with the material world and our awareness of its temporary nature.
DE 2020