Becoming a fossil
Created during the pandemic, these drawings were inspired by art objects and discoveries from around the world, particularly from places where my family and I have lived or are said to have come from. Each of these pieces started from puddles of water and, like fossils, aim at preserving something that remains and is remembered, bits and pieces captured within the sediments of memory and shaped by the movement of water and ink as much as the passage of time, whose meaning and predictions can only be gleaned by hypothesis, free association, or passed down stories.
Because I wanted you not to know (2020)
Video (2:29)
Drawing an erotic scene from the Sun Temple of Konark, I had the urge to wash the drawing away, to somehow get rid of the guilty pleasure of using an image so explicit and so belonging to a different time and culture, but as I poured water, the ink swirled into the present moment and told a story anew.
Wrapped (2021)
Ink and collage on paper (14.25” x 17.75”)
Riffing off of a photograph of a mummified parrot found in the Atacama Desert, believed to be the victim of an ancient poaching trade
I walked a path (2020)
Ink and color pencil on paper (10” x 41”)
Exhibition: "It's not easy becoming a fossil," Mattie Kelley Arts Center, Holzhauer Gallery, Niceville, Florida (August-December 2021)
Video documentation 4:18
Satyr gazing (2020)
Ink and color pencils on paper (22” x 30”)
Awarded “Best in Show” by Ndubuisi Ezeloumba, curator of African Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, at the 28th Annual Emerald Coast National Juried Fine Arts Exhibit, Mattie Kelly Arts Center Galleries, Niceville, Florida (2020)
Satyr Gazing started with splashes on the paper of the most fundamental of elements—water. Comprising most of our beings, indispensable to our survival, yet a formidable destructive force at times, water created a pattern on the paper, on which I drew gesturally the portrait of an ancient Greek satyr. This mythological character was a goat-man nature spirit that followed Bacchus, the god of wine and debauchery. While drunk and rambunctious, he also had a great sense of intuition and loyalty, and could deliver pearls of wisdom. In my drawing, the water’s expressive power transformed my mark-making, dubbing the initial narrative into a story anew about the satyr still in us all—that animal nature that is all very human, that human thing that is all pretty much nature, that captivating sensuality of our ambiguous temperaments.
Skeletons in the cave (2020)
Ink on paper (11” x 13”)
Riffing on a photograph of the remains of a young couple that perished about 6,000 years ago. Their skeletons were found embracing in a cave near Mantua.